


this is the world of the theater

by stutter



Series: civilians [3]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: ...kind of, Alternate Universe - Mundane Lives, Anxiety, Drag Race still isn't really a thing, M/M, Makeup Swap, Past Sex Work, everyone is really trying their best out here, sex in drag, the timeline has been compromised
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-01-05 12:57:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21208919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stutter/pseuds/stutter
Summary: “Believe it or not, bitch, there was a time when men would pay good money for a taste of all this,” Katya says when they break apart. She draws hoops in the air around her face, her tits, her tuck. Trixie blows a raspberry.“Girl, if you found ‘em in the psych ward, I don’t know if it counts,” she says.





	1. good female loving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so like...a while ago I wrote a story called [burn all your civilian clothes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18210257/chapters/43859158). (you could maybe read this one without it, but it'll probably help if you hit that link first.) I said I'd take requests for in-universe one-shots, and I got some extremely lovely requests. and then i ended up just kind of...writing a sequel. which was not the plan! but i'm really glad i did! This fic incorporates suggestions from [oh_wowww](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_wowww/pseuds/oh_wowww), [ iamalsohere9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamalsohere9/pseuds/iamalsohere9), and [WitchNails.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchNails/pseuds/WitchNails) Thank you very much to them and to anyone who read the first part.
> 
> and thank you most of all to [beanierose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanierose/pseuds/beanierose), without whom i would have never, ever gotten this written. thank you for shaking me out of my seclusion, for listening to me endlessly, for pushing me to be kinder to myself, and for sharing your talent with me. we are soulmates for the time being and i am so lucky to have you.

It’s almost time to leave and Katya’s doing it again. Trixie keeps catching her at it: staring at herself in the mirror, examining her angles. Not preening, exactly, not mugging like a pageant girl or a look queen, not just feeling her oats. Her eyes are serious, focused, her head at a tilt. Her red lips pout a little, unconsciously, Veronica Lake realness. (More like Veronica Swamp-ass, Trixie’s brain supplies.)

She unhooks Katya’s earring carefully and bites her ear, wrapping both arms around her waist. “Oh, ow, _ow,_” Katya gasps, feigning terrible pain, then swoons into Trixie at once, hissing with laughter at her own bit. 

“What are you looking at?” Trixie asks. “Let me help—yes, those _are_ crow’s feet. It’s not just the light.” Katya snorts, rolling her big smoky eyes. Trixie goes on, “You’re aging like a fine wine. Wait, sorry, I mean, a grape. Like, you remember those California Raisins?”

Katya elbows her in the gut, and she falls back with a squeak. “Time comes for us all, Beatrice,” Katya croaks. “_Will you still fuck me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?”_

Trixie can’t help herself. “I’m sorry, when exactly were you those things?” 

“You _skunk!”_ Katya swings at her, face screwed up in outrage, and Trixie grabs her wrists out of the air and pulls her in close. “I refuse to be, to be, antagonized, victimized, _satirized_ by your _crude misrepresentations—”_

Trixie shuts her up with a kiss, even though she tastes like lipstick and smells like girly perfume, violet and citrus. Trixie knows the scent personally. He pilfered it for her from Sephora, sample vial by sample vial. (“Don’t quit your day job, mama,” Katya’d said, spritzing herself. “Seriously, don’t, I’m living off these perks.”)

“Believe it or not, bitch, there was a time when men would pay good money for a taste of all this,” Katya says when they break apart. She draws hoops in the air around her face, her tits, her tuck. Trixie blows a raspberry.

“Girl, if you found ‘em in the psych ward, I don’t know if it counts,” she says. 

Katya shrieks and shakes her fists with delight. She adopts an off-kilter warble, grinding her jaw: “‘Excuse me, ma’am, can I offer you this fistful of loose buttons for a quick handy?’” Trixie cackles. Katya gropes Trixie’s fake tits, palms her padded ass. “You are such a cunt. Huh? You’re so mean. I _love_ you.”

“Gross, you fag,” she says, tingling all over. She kisses Katya again, holding her close. Katya always goes absolutely bananas for a good makeout. It still makes her moan, even all these months on, throaty and deep so Trixie can feel the sound in her jaw. 

Trixie slides her hands over Katya’s back, traces her spine, maps the angular jut of where her wings would be were she an angel instead of the actual spawn of Satan. Katya moves against her restlessly. She undoes a couple of Trixie’s buttons and slips her fingers inside her blouse, gropes her fake tits through her bra. It feels like nothing. Trixie laughs. “Oh, yeah, you trying to get to second base, bitch?” She shimmies her shoulders for emphasis, mewling. “You want to get some of this _good female loving?”_

“I dunno, I never done it with another _girl_ before,” Katya sings at her, all soft and falsetto. Trixie feels a shrill giggle climbing up the back of her throat, lets it out slowly through her mouth like loud pink smoke. “You don’t have any secrets hidden under that pretty skirt, do you?”

“Just one.” Trixie’s using all the vocal control she has to land her punchline in a sweet femme caress. “But I’ll just slip it in between your _big fucking tits_ and you won’t mind it so much, how’s that sound?”

“Oh my _gawd.”_ Katya almost doubles over, like pain. “You nasty little whore, come here.” She grabs Trixie around the waist and kisses her hard, open-mouthed, desperate. Trixie squeals and pulls away.

“Bitch, calm down!” She wipes her mouth with the inside of her wrist. “I’m _joking.”_

“And?” Katya’s worked all the way up; her voice is half breath and her fingers dig hard into the spot in the middle of Trixie’s back she always knows how to find, the one that powers off her shoulder tension and makes her hips stutter forward. “C’mon. We’ve got hours. It ain’t a school night, Nancy.”

“No, I don’t—wanna look at your _manicure_ wrapped around my _dick,”_ Trixie says. She prises Katya’s hands off her spine, and Katya takes approximately twenty percent of the note, smoothing her hands over the swell of Trixie’s hips instead.

“So close your eyes, you bitch,” she offers sweetly. 

Trixie snorts. “Girl, no, gross. No way.”

It takes. Katya pulls back at once, smiling blithely. “No, okay,” she agrees, hands up. She goes back to the vanity, runs her thumbnail over the feathered track of her lip liner. “Look what you did to me,” she complains cheerfully. With her free hand, she snaps at Trixie behind her. “What did you do with my fucking earring, you common thief?”

Trixie hooks the earring back through her pierced lobe with only a little effort. She can find a hole with relative ease, Linda, thank you. She remembers when Katya found this pair, secondhand and way underpriced, considering the luster of the stones, at their favorite hole-in-the-wall consignment shop on Melrose. His face went full surprise-party as he held them up to the light to dazzle Trixie, watching him for a reaction like he always did, his face split wide in a conspirator’s grin. Trixie presses a quick kiss under Katya’s ear at the memory, and Katya coos as she paints more crimson over her mouth. Trixie feels a little shift in the room’s topography. The floor goes, for a second, a little steep.

“I mean, like,” she adds, “like, we _can,_ if you really want to, I just—” 

“Wait, wait, that number, the _Chicago_ one,” Katya says suddenly, whirling. “Were you gonna teach me the step you do? Or am I just gonna wiggle around up there?”

“Excuse _me,”_ Trixie says immediately. “When have you _ever_ attempted to learn a step, girl?” Katya clutches at her heart, a mortal ego wound, and the lipsticks spread over the vanity immediately roll back into place.

And like, that is _that._

\---

Trixie is still figuring it out. 

Sometimes, when he wakes up to soft breath in his ear and a warm chest at his back, he still thinks, _Brian._ Most of the time, when they’re laughing at some awful pun or a dumb meme on one of their phones, he thinks, _Katya._ It’s Brian to the makeup girls at Sephora, Katya to the gogo boys at Syndicate. The other queens: Katya. The other yogis: Brian. 

He closes down the bar, rakes in tips with Katya. 

Brian, he fucks.

“Do you care?” Trixie asks one night, clearing away takeout containers. They’re at his place. Bob’s still gone. It’s too quiet on the nights they’re not together, but it’s closer to work.

Katya’s sprawled all over the couch, stretching like a cat. “Why should I?” he asks, pursing his lips. “You know who I am. It’s all fine.” His voice goes Transatlantic and raspy. “Call me anything you want, Marjorie, but don’t call me late for—”

“Your period,” Trixie interrupts. “Listen, neither one of us is ready to be a mother, I think we can agree on that much.” 

Katya lets out a high caw of laughter, a big red exclamation point punched into the air. “No! No, fuck it, let’s make a baby,” he insists, tumbling to the floor and beckoning for Trixie there. “C’mon. God wants your womb to bear fruit, Tracy, you really wanna dishonor our Lord and Savior like that?”

“_You_ are a fruit,” Trixie shoots back, trying not to grin as he crosses the little distance between them, goes to his knees. “But you’re absolutely _unbearable.”_

And then they’re both laughing, and then they’re making out, and then the Q&A portion of the evening’s proceedings draws to a close, thanks for coming out.

It’s simple. Shut up, stop worrying. Katya, actually, is simple, wants simple things. Katya wants a new dress. He wants a cigarette. He wants head, wants an ice cream cone, wants to sleep in. And Trixie wants to give it to him, whatever he needs: wants to play the songs he likes on the guitar, wants to surprise him with iced coffee at the yoga studio just to watch his nose wrinkle up in you-shouldn’t-have annoyance. Trixie wants to watch him laugh, neck snapped back. Wants to make him come, eyes incredulous and pleading.

“Don’t lie to me,” Trixie says sometimes, still, and Katya says, “I’m not gonna, honey.”

\---

That first time, Trixie’d brought Katya along to Tiger Shark as her special guest. Like, Bring-Your-Daughter-to-Work Day, but make it profoundly dysfunctional. Bring-Your-Daughter-Out-of-Retirement Day. Also-You’re-Fucking-Her-and-She’s-Old-Enough-to-Be-Your-Grandmother. Katya was docile and coltish, nerves making her impossibly femme, the bitch. Trixie practically had to coax her out from backstage with a handful of sugar cubes. But under the hot blue melt of the stage lights, something happened. It _worked._ Trixie’s eyes filled with stars. Katya was goddamn Russian Seabiscuit, and they were off to the races. 

And then Trixie’s biweekly gig became Trixie and Katya’s biweekly gig, and then the booker at The Basement came calling with a better rate and an actual weekly slot, and now they’re _doing_ this. Obviously, because they’re different species of the same genus of idiot (within the Bald Fag Kingdom), they had no idea what to call the show. Katya wanted “Dr. Arroway’s Science and Discovery Variety Hour;” Trixie, who understands at least the _first_ thing about marketing, liked the simplicity of “The Trixie and Katya Show.” They ended up settling on the first thing they thought of that made them both really laugh: 

“HI!!!” Trixie bleats into the mic, stone-cold, unsmiling. Katya never gets sick of this. Tonight, she doubles over and goes all the way down, somehow turning it into a somersault and landing on her ass with her legs rag-dolled in front of her, all without disrupting her wig in the slightest. She must have traded the Devil something really choice for her hip flexors, for those limbs. Gave him her taste in men, probably. Trixie holds her open hand out, and Katya grabs it, hoisting herself easily to her feet and arcing right up against her, hanging off Trixie like wisteria.

_“Hello,”_ she adds into Trixie’s mic. “Good evening! How is everyone? How are things at home? Did you—” she dissolves into giggles. “Like, did everyone have enough dinner?”

Trixie cackles right along with the crowd. “Bitch, as if half of these fags have eaten anything today.” The laugh ramps up, and Trixie rides it. “_HI!!!_ is bottom culture, and you can quote me on that, girl. Right? Who’s out here trying to get dicked down tonight?”

The audience was hyped up just from the sound of their intro music playing, but now they’re losing it. This kind of call-and-response crowd work is cheap, but so’s instant ramen, and that doesn’t get any complaints, either. A room has never loved her like this, the way these rooms do. Nothing has, nobody, except the idiot standing beside her. Her heart clenches and her skirt haloes up around her as she turns to Katya. “You wanna do a number for these nice people?”

“Mother, you’re confusing ‘nice’ with ‘fuckable,’ again,’” Katya says, never missing a beat, squinting through her lashes and the stage lights into the dark of the audience. Her face breaks open in a brilliant, warm smile. Everyone is obsessed with her. Of course they are. “But let’s do one anyway. Hit it!”

Ron’s in the booth tonight, and he cues up their track without missing a beat. Off to the races. Trixie’s muscles know what to do; she learns choreography like she’s cramming for an exam. (Katya cuts class, skips the homework, smokes in the bathroom, and aces it anyway.) 

They kill their routine and the room goes up like a bomb detonating. It always does, now. The dissonance of being suddenly beloved by the same prissy twinks that used to disinterestedly trawl Grindr in the front row of every one of her shows gives Trixie a toothache from time to time, but what doesn’t? She’s rotting from the inside, laughing all the way to the dentist. A flurry of wadded-up singles sails onto the stage toward them. They didn’t even have to beg. Trixie dives for the bills, straightens them out before Katya’s eyes. “Look,” she exclaims, waving two of them in her face. “Isn’t this your going rate?”

Katya writhes through a long, silent laugh. She snatches the cash out of Trixie’s fingers and shoves it in her mouth with a feral moan of pleasure. Trixie recoils. “Oh, my god,” she chides. “Take those out of your mouth. They don’t know where you’ve been!”

Katya tongues the money out, sticks it in her bra. “Ladies and gentlemen, a truly rotten bitch, some real fuckin’ Appalachian roadkill in a pink dress, Trixie Mattel,” she announces, framing Trixie from wig to hips with her hands. The crowd cheers indulgently, so Trixie curtsies, smiling like a gracious runner-up.

“And, you guys, please give it up for Katya Zamolodchikova!” she adds. “God knows _she’s_ given it up.”

Katya howls right along with the rest of the room at the burn, louder than anybody. Love for her fills Trixie’s shoes, makes her levitate.

“And, by the way,” Katya says, cheating out to face the room, “so what if I have? Given it up? This is a slanderous, vile campaign of misinformation. I would need at least…” She makes a big show of looking down her neckline, re-counting the money— “_six_ more dollars before I’d consider an offer from an enterprising gentlemen in a parked or idling vehicle.” She pauses for a laugh, which she gets, before she goes on: “But I’m not unreasonable. I’d always price-match any streetwalker of equal or lesser value.”

This again. “Oh, my god! I absolutely cannot imagine what ‘lesser value’ looks like,” Trixie says. She flips her waves over one shoulder. “But so, you guys, this is the point in the show where—” 

“I mean, for what it’s worth,” Katya says, grabbing Trixie’s hand—Ron smashes the buzzer effect on his soundboard, making them jerk apart— “I mean, among the… y’know, this was back in my hookin’ days, which, you don’t do it for the money. You get in it for the love of the game.” 

“Okay,” Trixie says, bemused. “Great.” She’s not used to being interrupted; her unfinished sentence jangles in her mouth like a loose tooth. She can see that beyond Katya’s lashes, her eyes are serious. So, okay. 

Normally, at this point in the show, they’d go to the audience for a topic and riff on it for a while, make a taffy pull of it, all sugary and senseless. But Katya’s still on this, stroking the air between them with a soothing hand: “But, so, this was all ages ago. My _Pretty Woman_ moments. Before I was _respectable_ like this.”

Trixie knows this person, knows her rhythms, knows the way her thoughts orbit. Knows when she’s doing a bit, mostly now, and when she’s _not joking, bitch._ She is not. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is what respectability looks like. Just a couple of dignified women on the town, over here, so, stay in school,” she announces. Katya poses, struts, mugs, which makes Trixie laugh more. “A _Pretty Woman _moment,” she muses.

“Uh-huh.” Katya winks at her. Her mouth smiles, but her eyes are like stone. “A real hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold situation.” 

Trixie thinks fast. The thing between them isn’t part of their _thing_ onstage. That’s how Trixie likes it. She wants to shield it from view, block it with her massive shoulders. Whatever Katya’s trying to tell her, it’s gonna have to wait. 

“Heart of, like, gold-plated nickel, maybe,” she says, side-eying the audience. “A heart that’d turn your skin green. I never had a _Pretty Woman_ moment, which is weird, because, like, what about this whole thing I’m doing doesn’t make a guy think,‘Oh yeah, that looks like a safe, fun time’?” She gets her laugh. “I’ve definitely gotten sick after some fairly _Mystic-al Pizza,_ though. You ever have food poisoning? _Mama.”_

“Never during a session with the _trade,_” Katya says thoughtfully. “Though, bitch, there’ve been some close calls…” 

Ron, bless his heart, cues up some Sade, the perfect underscoring for a long digression about gastrointestinal distress. Trixie tries to catch Katya’s eye, check in with a quirk of her lips or a quick touch, but she’s cut her phone lines. She’s pacing, cagey in a way that Trixie knows well enough not to push against. She looks really pretty tonight, soft in a little black dress with bell sleeves that flutter as she gestures. They can talk later. Right now, all they can do is exactly what they’re doing. Trixie keeps her brain moving, keeps the ball in the air. Katya catches it again and again. Everything is fine; they’re crushing. They always crush. When Trixie laughs at Katya’s jokes, she grins, big and white, like she always does.

After the show, they de-drag in the green room. “Hey,” Trixie says, “do you wanna talk about—”

“Mother _fuck!”_ There’s a snap. Trixie looks. Katya’s balancing on one foot, working off her other shoe. The heel hangs loose, busted. Okay.

She falls asleep on Trixie’s shoulder on the cab ride home, silent and warm on his left side. He’s always looking left, now, for Katya, likes the comfort of finding him there, just where he’s supposed to be. They drop into Katya’s bed and curl around each other, and Trixie has a lot of questions but he’s not about to ask them now, not when Katya is already dreaming with wild eyes shut, his face wiped clean of makeup and tension and worry. After a little while, Trixie sleeps, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is a playlist for this fic [here,](https://www.tinyurl.com/stutterwott) if you like that kind of thing!
> 
> i feel about feedback the way trixie feels about a golden hamster. thank you!!


	2. drama, destitution, debasement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this one does get a trigger warning: there is a repeated ignored "no" and subsequently a crossed boundary as a result. it is an accident, and not particularly explicit; nobody is badly hurt. proceed with caution if this is sensitive for you. 
> 
> if this feels way out of your depth, once you hit "A little storm of adrenaline" just scroll down to "Katya is so still."
> 
> i am extremely grateful to [joanneelizabeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/joanneelizabeth/pseuds/joanneelizabeth), [mattepinkallshades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattepinkallshades/pseuds/mattepinkallshades), and [connyhascontrol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/connyhascontrol/pseuds/connyhascontrol) for welcoming me into their family of extremely talented weirdos. which wouldn't have happened if [beanierose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanierose/pseuds/beanierose) hadn't caught me like a rare pokemon first. i really love you a lot.

Drag’s a good business lately. Trixie’s down to like two or three shifts a week at Sephora, and he gives away even those when he can. Most days, the only middle-aged woman pointedly ignoring his sage beauty advice is Katya. He misses steady paychecks, likes the challenge of a cute makeover montage, but he likes being his own boss more. The only real downside is that when there’s no reason to set an alarm, he tends to jerk awake like a hostage, unsure where he is or how many hours he’s lost. It takes a minute to remember that nothing’s wrong, that all his time belongs to him. Calm down, _Misery._

The morning after the show, he opens his eyes to milky sunlight that could indicate any time from shortly post-dawn to early afternoon. On the bedside table, in its own bright spotlight, there’s a clear plastic cup of coffee waiting for him; Katya’s already gone out and come back. It’s iced, melting, dripping condensation all over everything. His dick twitches inexplicably at the sight, which makes him laugh, high and loud. 

“Jesus Christ!” Katya gasps. Trixie startles, bouncing on the mattress. Katya’s in a perfect Camel pose on the floor at the foot of the bed, skin glinting gold in the light streaming through the window. He eyes Trixie upside-down and lets out a breath. “Scared the shit out of me, Mary, I thought you were still asleep.”

“Just woke up.” Trixie grabs the coffee and drinks, cool little rivers running down his palm toward his elbow. “Oh my god, thank you for this.”

“Mm-hmm!” Katya rights himself, bringing his hands skyward before folding them back toward his chest for Prayer. The muscles in his back ripple. Holding the coffee aloft, Trixie crawls closer on his knees and one wrist. 

“Hey.” He blows softly on the nape of Katya’s neck, making him purr. “Hey, when you’re done, will you rub my back? I think I did something to it last night. Hurts in the middle.”

“I most certainly will _not_.” Katya drops down to his forearms. “I keep telling you to stretch before you get into those goddamn Pleasers, but you won’t listen. This is what you get for ignoring my pearls of wisdom. Die like that, bitch.” 

“I would _love_ to die,” Trixie says, “but then who’ll care for you when you’re elderly? Like, six weeks from now?”

Katya doesn’t respond, just lifts up into a real fuck-you of a headstand, light as an inhale. Trixie’s mouth goes dry. He sips. The fact is, Katya’s never going to need any care. He’ll be a hundred years old and showing everybody else up at water aerobics long after Trixie’s died from a bad fall reaching for the Cap’n Crunch in Aisle 3. He watches while Katya’s legs waver, straighten, curve down toward him into Scorpion. All of him, held aloft on his forearms. He’s so strong. “I hate you,” Trixie says. “I get it, you’re a perfect specimen. You piece of shit.”

Katya’s eyes are closed, but his mouth twitches up into a minute smile. He dismounts into a backbend, pauses, cartwheels back over into child’s pose. Trixie wants to suck the life out of him, wants to smash their bodies together like a pair of Ken dolls, but there’s a fog still hanging in the air from last night. “Come here,” he murmurs. 

“I’m all sweaty and disgusting,” Katya complains, fanning himself with his hands. 

“Oh, she’s dainty now. You think I care?” Trixie likes the smell of him, the way he throws heat like a small sun. He drops the coffee on the nightstand and rolls over onto his stomach, moaning in pain for emphasis. Katya snorts out a laugh and clambers up onto the bed, straddling his hips. Trixie takes a deep breath. “Right in the middle,” he repeats. 

“I know where.” Katya’s long fingers span his ribs, press hard, push out all Trixie’s air. “You gotta breathe, Tracy,” he reminds him.

Trixie pulls in another lungful with no small effort. Over him, Katya makes an amused sound. “How’d you get a _drag_ injury, you fuckin’ faggot?” he asks. “Ain’t no worker’s comp for this.”

“I’m just—_fu-uuuck_—dedicated to my craft,” Trixie wheezes. Katya pushes harder, and the pain ratchets up, a red bloom in his eyes. He reaches back behind him and claws at Katya’s leg.

“You’re fine, bitch,” Katya insists, but there’s sugar in the words. “Nothing’s broken. You’re not Kerri Strug.” 

“You wish,” Trixie hisses. “That’d really get you hard. You dyke.”

Katya’s knuckles notch across a few vertebrae, and tension starts rendering off his muscles. Trixie buries his face in the blanket, drunk on it. “Yeah, but, all kinds of things get me hard,” Katya points out. “That’s not a high bar.”

Trixie sees the window opening, dives through before it can fall shut again. “Including turning tricks for bus fare, I’ve recently learned.” He keeps his tone level, casual. Katya doesn’t spook easily, but when he does, it’s leporine, all whites of the eyes and sprinting for the hills.

“_Hah!_” He flattens his hands over Trixie’s back. “Yeah, I mean. I _was_ telling you, I was…”

Trixie can’t see his face, can’t read his tone. Sometimes Katya’s breezy because he’s trying to downplay. Sometimes it’s just the weather. “I know you were,” he says. “Before we went on, when you tried to fucking jump me. And then your little, like, monologue in the middle of our show.” Katya laughs quietly, makes a noncommittal sound. Trixie ventures, “I just, like, I assumed you were joking.” 

Katya sinks both palms into the meat of Trixie’s hips and digs in with his thumbs. “I was joking!” he protests. His voice is delicate, tiptoe. “But that don’t mean it ain’t true.”

Trixie lets this sink all the way in. “Okay,” he agrees.

He’s—like, he isn’t scandalized, obviously, what year is it? But the thought of it, the image, however long ago—it’s nothing like sweet, unassuming Brian, it’s—what it is is pure Katya, her seaglass eyes lashed and shadowed and her mouth turning up in one corner, the sort of come-hither tilt of her chin that she does so well, it’s—

“You never heard of a thing called comedy before, Tina Marie?” Katya asks loftily.

“Excuse me.” Trixie cranes his neck, tries to glare over his shoulder. “That’s so sexist. Are you implying women can’t be funny?”

“Just _some_ women.” Katya smooths his hands up to Trixie’s shoulders, starts kneading, first lightly and then a little harder.

“Wow,” Trixie says loudly. “_Wow,_ spread the word. ‘Local drag queen hates women, says women aren’t funny’ - oh, fuck _you,_ that feels so good.” Katya doesn’t say anything, just hums with satisfaction as he works on him. 

Trixie swallows. “So… so when you used to, this was—did you, like…” He trails off. His eyes find a spot on the wall, one of Katya’s vintage Soviet postcards, some blond top flexing with a confident smirk. So goddamn pleased with himself just because it’s the 50s and he works out. “I mean,” he says quietly, “you want me to know, right, so what should I know.” 

“Oh my _gawd._” Katya squeezes his shoulders and slips off him. Trixie rolls over, props himself up at the head of the bed. Katya’s legs are crossed. He’s weaving and unweaving a basket of his fingers. He’s a series of knots and tangles that Trixie wants to undo with his teeth. “Look, it’s not—like, it doesn’t have to be a _thing._ I just, I dunno why I brought it up now, I’m sorry, you know, but—” He cracks his knuckles in a ruthless tattoo. Trixie shudders. “You’re always telling me to be honest, and it felt like…_relevant._” Katya pauses, then lets out a laugh. “_Relevant_ to our _shared interests_.” 

“No, no.” Trixie stretches his leg out to poke Katya’s knee. Katya takes his foot carefully in both hands and starts to rub. “It is! And it makes sense. It’s the world’s oldest profession, and you’re the world’s oldest woman. I wanna hear it all.” 

Katya rakes his fingers once across Trixie’s sole to punish him, making him squeak and jerk back. “It wasn’t that crazy,” he says, shrugging one shoulder. He’s being nice, now, massaging properly. Pleasure crawls up Trixie’s leg, settling low and warm in his stomach. “Just, y’know, for the first couple of years that I was engaging in dragoonery and buffoonery, audiences were not exactly, like, picking up what I was putting down, so to speak, and it was… an exciting career opportunity as well as a means of a generous secondary income.”

Trixie’s eyes pop back open. “Some people get day jobs!” he protests, half-laughing. 

Katya dismisses this with a roll of his eyes, tongue lolled out. Trixie knows what he’s not saying: day jobs are for the uninspired and uninspiring, for the unimaginative and the tragically hinged. “It was kind of a day job.” His eyes sparkle. “Like Mary Kay, but instead of selling cosmetics…” 

“It was your hole,” Trixie suggests. Katya cackles, shaking his head. 

“No.” He releases Trixie’s foot, then gestures for the other one. Trixie switches his balance to give it to him.

“No?” he repeats. Katya’s thumb strokes along his ankle down to the arch of his foot. Trixie’s toes curl, and Katya digs in harder. Trixie lets out an unsteady breath. Katya’s watching his hands and what they’re doing, not looking at Trixie’s face at all.

“I didn’t really do that,” he says. “I don’t really do that.” 

“I mean.” Trixie raises a brow. “I know you don’t with me, but—” 

“Oh, bitch, your hungry ass wouldn’t let me even _if_ I wanted to,” Katya laughs. Trixie scoots a little closer, bending at the knee so Katya can keep rubbing. 

“Do you, though?” he asks quietly. “Is that what—do you?”

“No,” Katya says again. 

“You don’t want that at all? Because I can, because—” 

“Tracy, _no,_” Katya says, squeezing for emphasis. If Trixie’s not completely insane, he looks like he might be blushing. Trixie’s spine prickles at the sight. “Look, it’s not—it wasn’t fucking _Moulin Rouge,_ it wasn’t like that at—whatever you’re picturing, okay, take the drama, destitution and debasement down a few notches.”

Trixie feels his mouth trying to split in a slow, stupid grin. “Is that where they kept you?” he asks seriously. “In… _de basement?_”

Katya stares at him for a second. Neither says anything. Then Trixie snorts, then howls, and Katya lunges. He gets on top of him, throwing him bodily back on the bed while Trixie wails with laughter. 

“You! You gutted, _rotted_—can’t take you _anywhere,_” Katya’s hissing, fighting back giggles, dodging Trixie’s hands as he tries to smack him away. “You are _incorrigible,_ you’re a _menace,_ you tramp, you—”

They grapple—Katya’s got him by the shoulders, flips him easily back onto his stomach, and then—it’s happening fast, the air gets hot, the floor rakes—the sound goes out of their laughter and suddenly Katya’s panting on the back of his neck, holding him down, and he’s arching back—

A little storm of adrenaline pulses in his chest, throbs out into his throat and his belly, and he follows it, chases the instinct. The color in Katya’s cheeks, down the line of his neck. Maybe, maybe. His wild expression during the show. Trixie knocks his balance backward, and when Katya topples off his knees with a goofy _whoof!_ he pounces on him, pins him down on his back. It’s no effort to grab Katya’s leg behind the knee and push it up between their chests. It practically goes up to Katya’s ear, the circus freak. Katya’s eyes are wide and very blue, worlds in them.

“You want this?” Trixie murmurs, leaning in close to his face. “This what you want?”

“No,” Katya whispers. He’s breathing hard. His chest heaves. His body rolls like a wave. 

“You do, don’t you?” Trixie’s grinning. He strokes a hand down Katya’s cheek, thumbs his lip. Katya stares up at him, mouth open, head shaking. “It’s okay,” he soothes. “You can tell me. I can give you what you want.” He’s dying for it, to get it right, to be whatever it is he’s trying to ask for but can’t quite seem to say. “It’s okay, honey. Let me do this for you, let me—” 

Katya _thrashes._ Every long limb, every inch of him, is muscle. That body is no joke, and now it’s turned against Trixie, and he feels how powerful it is. Katya shoves away hard, rights himself, propels to the edge of the bed and sits with his legs folded under him. His back is perfectly straight. Trixie, flung off, lands on one arm and scuttles backwards. He catches his breath on the other side of the bed, puts both hands over his face.

“I said, no,” Katya says calmly. He doesn’t look angry, doesn’t look scared. He’s actually smiling a little, somehow, placid and pale. “Don’t do that again. I don’t like that.” 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Trixie is seasick. He sways. 

“You’re good.”

Katya is so still. 

“I can’t always—I don’t always know where the line is, with us, sometimes it’s…” He feels monstrous, he’d never, he would never. His eyeballs are hot. 

“It’s okay,” Katya says. After a minute, he reaches for Trixie, who doesn’t move. He shifts forward, comes close enough to take a hand from Trixie’s mouth and settle it in his lap to give it a squeeze.

Trixie drives on, miserable, “I mean, we could, maybe we should use, like, a _word,_ or—” 

“How about we just stop when the other one says stop, and we won’t have a problem. Okay? Reasonable?” He lifts Trixie’s wrist to his mouth and presses a kiss there. “I am fine. I am absolutely fine. We’re fine. I know what you were trying to—I can see where your intention maybe…“ He lifts his eyes to the ceiling, then looks back to him again. “You just don’t _get_ this, Tracy. And that’s okay. You don’t have to get everything.”

“_Brian._” Trixie inches closer, and Katya doesn’t resist him, doesn’t pull back. “Don’t let me _hurt_ you. I can’t ‘get’ anything unless you tell me what the fuck you’re thinking.”

Katya laughs dryly. “One brief foray into the annals of my sordid past and I’m _Brian_ again, suddenly.” Their shared name is jarring, defensive, the crack of a fan over his face. He’s got his lower lip between his teeth, bites til it flushes arrest-me red. Then his strings cut and his eyes uncloud and he makes himself laugh, softly. “Listen, mama. I’m trying too, okay? But there’s a difference between honesty between, like, two people who like each other, and your AP Bio frog dissection. Right?” He flutters his free hand: _me, you, this._ “Let me keep my skin on. It’s all I got.”

Trixie nods. Katya looks at his fingers curled around Trixie’s wrist, pulses a rhythm there. Trixie swallows.

“We didn’t have AP classes at my school,” he offers quietly. “Too poor for ‘em.”

Katya’s lip curls up on the right side. His glance flicks to Trixie’s face, and then back down. “C’mon, _Hillbilly Elegy,_” he says quietly. 

Their eyes meet. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Trixie starts, and Katya joins him gleefully - “_welcometotheSTAGE, HILLBILLY ELEGY!_”

They shriek, flop down laughing. Trixie’s throat is tight with what can only be love. 

“Are you sure you’re good?” He scans Katya’s wide eyes for any sign either way. Katya’s looking at him like he always does, like Trixie hung the moon just for him. It doesn’t make any sense. 

“I can handle me, Tracy,” he murmurs. “Kiss me.”

He rolls over and kisses Katya tentatively, but when Katya opens right up for him it’s like a door being kicked down. Trixie drags it out, makes a whole thing of it, slow and wet and hot. They wrap up in each other’s arms, twining like low-tide flotsam. Katya’s making quiet sounds into Trixie’s mouth, pleading ones. Trixie pulls back for air.

“Just tell me what I don’t get.” He leans in and curls his tongue against Katya’s lip. Katya shudders, and Trixie coos in sympathy. “Tell me what I don’t get and then I’ll blow you.”

“You’ll blow me anyway,” he says. He’s really in it now, pinning him down on his back and angling his hips into Trixie’s. Trixie can feel how hard he is between them, and his brain takes on static for a second. His heart is beating in his mouth, in his dick.

“Sure, but if you tell me, I won’t use my teeth,” he offers.

Katya flings his head to the side, woe is he. “You’re like a dog with a bone,” he gripes, and then, off the sudden glint in Trixie’s eye, shrills, “Don’t you _dare_ ‘oh honey’ me at this juncture, you rank bitch!” He pushes himself up, drags them both to the headboard, and settles Trixie over his lap. 

Trixie presses in close and opens his mouth against Katya’s neck, touches all the skin he can reach, gropes him through his shorts. “Help me help you, girl,” he murmurs. He dips his head, pushes Katya’s shoulders back against the headboard to get at the bee inked on his collarbone, sting it with his bottom teeth.

“I—god, fuck, I—I know you’re angling for some salacious insights, mama, but it was pretty standard fare for a ladyboy like yours truly.” His words are coming in little spurts, uneven, but his tone stays level. He’s fighting for control. Normally by now he’s full Igor, practically grunting and gesturing at his dick with both hands, but tonight he’s hanging on. He’s being polite, somehow. 

It hits Trixie like a poison dart, leaks into him dark and urgent: Katya’s _embarrassed._ Trixie’s never seen him apologize for anything he was thinking or feeling, not even when he _really_ should. Katya tenses under him as he builds a thought, slowly, like he’s shaping it out of stone. He goes on, finally, “It was… it was lovely, most of the time. Okay? It was just lonely guys, like, married, ‘straight’ guys—” he actually has the audacity to air-quote at a time like this— “with a little money, who wanted to get fucked up the ass by a chick with a dick. And I fit the bill.” 

Trixie gets a hand in Katya’s shorts, works him through his briefs. They’re clinging to Katya’s dick, damp with him. Katya makes a soft noise with absolutely no comedy in it. “And that’s what you liked?” Trixie asks. 

“No. That was fine. It’s more—it’s not just that.” Katya’s jaw is tight. His hand on Trixie’s back clenches and releases.

“You’re so hard, oh my _god,_” Trixie teases. His mouth floods. He’s starving for it.

“Are you gonna do something about it or not?” Katya hisses. He bumps their foreheads together, craning up for another kiss. 

“I’ve got to check my calendar,” he says with a sigh. “See what my schedule’s like.” Then he shifts backwards onto his knees to pull Katya’s cock free. Katya groans in relief. He’s slick, flushed dark. Trixie’s fingers slip over him easily, stroke without friction. He can feel himself already going slack-jawed, stupid and hungry, leaning in close.

“Girl, c’mon,” Katya murmurs. Trixie gets down to his elbows and dips over him, buries his face against Katya’s thigh. He opens his mouth and grazes hipbone, stomach, all that hot skin with his teeth, with the flat of his tongue.

“Any of them ever do this for you?” He can’t help himself. Katya’s cock jumps in his hand. Over him, he hisses out a laugh, traces Trixie’s ear with his thumb.

“Not without crying,” he says lightly. “You think you can manage?”

“Probably not,” Trixie says. He sucks a kiss at the base of Katya’s dick. Katya chokes on a breath. “But I’ll try.” All his patience has sapped away. He drags his tongue all the way up and swallows him down.

Trixie hears the thud and sharp exhale that means Katya’s forgotten about the headboard again. He laughs low in his throat. “Oh, you shut your goddamn mouth,” Katya hisses through gritted teeth, so Trixie obliges, seals his lips around him and starts sucking his cock like he means it. He fumbles for one of Katya’s hands and clamps it on the back of his own neck. Katya’s fingers tighten. 

“How’s that?” he asks softly, and Trixie groans low in his throat until Katya’s hips jerk up hard for more and he has to move with him so he doesn’t gag. “_Shit,_ sorry, sorry,” he whispers, but Trixie glances up at him with his eyes wide and focused, shaking his head, showing him exactly how not sorry he should be. Katya’s head lolls back. The room is bright, and quiet but for the little sounds Trixie can’t keep in. A slash of sunlight bisects Katya’s face. Trixie breathes in slowly and takes him to the back of his throat. Katya’s mouth opens, and the sun slips inside.

“You really, _really_ love this, don’t you,” Katya murmurs. “It shows.” 

Trixie does. His own cock is aching beneath him, and he reaches down, grips himself with his free hand and starts stroking, loose and slow so he doesn’t lose control. He hums despite himself, and Katya mimics the sound. Trixie’d tell him to fuck off if he didn’t have a mouthful of his hard, dripping cock, if it didn’t feel so good. 

“You know,” Katya breathes, “for—_fuck_—for what it’s worth, you’ve given all of this about a hundred percent more thought than any trick of mine ever did.” Trixie blinks, watches his face. Katya says, with some effort, “That’s—that’s really something, Tracy, it’s sweet, in a sick and _profoundly_ annoying way.”

Trixie smiles around him. He sucks harder, clutching Katya close, and the way Katya runs his hand over his back, palm open and generous, feels like a gift he could never deserve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! i feel the way about comments that trixie feels about vintage barbies. it's a lot. 
> 
> fic playlist, with lots of chaotic-good love bangers and post-verbal fuckery, is [here.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5mlTMzmRyWaT65Vi99R0H1?si=KwUS7sInTIOWf06SNItCeg)


	3. a three-piece luggage set

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to the brilliant, funny, fascinating writers who've taken me into their coven, thank you. and to [beanierose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanierose/pseuds/beanierose), thank you most of all for your limitless patience and tremendous thoughtfulness. you have truly caught 'em all. i'm so glad you found me.

It’s one of those rare, silvery days where neither of them has anywhere to be: no work, no gigs, no plans. “We could hike,” Katya suggests first, coming up behind him on his knees on the bed and slithering over Trixie’s shoulder until he’s tumbled headfirst into his lap. “It’s a weekday! The trails’ll be dead.” Trixie heaves Katya’s legs away so he lies flat, stares up at him moon-eyed. Trixie brings his hands down to brush over his cheekbones, trace his lips, slip a couple fingertips into his willing mouth. 

“That’s such a great idea,” Trixie agrees. “Oh wow. I’d totally, totally love that. Why don’t I just jump in the shower real quick first, and then we’ll go? Unless you want to join me. That’s always an option.” 

Katya’s features narrow, pointy and sly. He gives Trixie a few minutes’ head start, then he slips into the bathroom behind him and eats him out under the spray of hot water until Trixie’s boneless and gasping against the tile, grout on his tongue. Trixie drags them both back to bed, rides Katya so good that his pretty eyes bug out. Finally, when all either of them can do is grasp at each other and smile like idiots, they pass out for a few more hours. Across the country, in the places they left behind, it’s six more weeks of winter. Here, it’s always summer, and they sleep in the sun like cats. 

They’re not talking about the other night. Trixie wants to, but he also wants to shield this, the soap bubble of the moment, from anything sharp. 

When they wake again they order breakfast tacos, even though it’s well past lunchtime. While they wait for the food, Trixie retrieves his sewing kit from the drag room. One of his favorite lacy nightgowns has a rip on one side and he’s attempting minor surgery while he’s still feeling productive, before the food comes and he loses himself to another vice. Not that it ends up mattering.

“Oh, my _god,_” he gripes. He tightens his fingers around the dress like he could crush it to dust. “Like, should I just buy a new one? Because this pattern is going to fucking kill me.”

Katya whines like the besotted bitch he is at the tragedy of Trixie’s Extremely Difficult Life. “_Give_ me this,” he says. He takes the dress in his hands and lays it neatly on the bed, kneels on the floor before it.

“The fucking lace,” Trixie grits out. “Like, there’s no give, and you can’t just whipstitch it, you have to—” 

“No, I know, it’s awful. Pain in the ass. Well, serves you right for dressing like fuckin’ Annabelle all the time.” Katya motions for Trixie’s needle and thread. He hands it over dutifully. He rolls onto his stomach and watches Katya work.

Trixie can sew. He likes making things fit. But he likes watching Katya do it, too, likes the way each stitch seems like its own decision. As if by magic, the delicate white flowers start coming back together under his careful hands. Katya’s frowning a little, his lower lip tight between his teeth.

“You’re good at this,” Trixie says quietly. 

“I’m fine. This is easy.” Katya’s eyes snap up to meet Trixie’s for just a second, his nose wrinkling in a _no shade_ scrunch. “I like it. It just takes patience. It’s like meditating.” 

“I can’t really do that, either.” Trixie drops his chin down onto his forearms. “What did you do instead of this when you quit drag? You must’ve missed it.”

“_Uh—_” Katya barks out a laugh. “I did _not_ miss doing repairs, Mary.” But he shakes his head before Trixie can get on his case about being such a smartass— “I know what you mean! Shut up. I know.” He pauses in his work for a minute, rolling his neck and wrists. “I did meditate. I did—other dumb stuff, yknow, I drew. I made collages. It’s all the same, like, solitary impulse, isn’t it? Getting something right. Doing it alone.”

Trixie’s lips curve up. He nods. 

He wants to say, but you’re not alone anymore. 

Instead he says, “You _collaged?_ I can see you with the Lisa Loeb playing, you fag, cutting out the pages from Seventeen magazine with all the cutest boys on them—”

“_Bitch!”_ Katya shrieks. “I will fist this goddamn lacework to pieces. I won’t hesitate!”

“What were your other hobbies?” Trixie asks seriously. “You get really into macrame? Making friendship bracelets?” 

Katya gets the scissors from the sewing kit and stabs them in Trixie’s direction. He rolls away, giggling. Katya snips. 

“Here,” he says, snapping his fingers. “Take a look.”

“Already?” Trixie sits up, comes closer. He inspects the garment, brows drawn together. His lips part. “Girl.”

“Good as new, right?” Katya beams. “Except it wasn’t very good to start with. But.”

“It’s_ good.”_ Trixie looks at the work, then at Katya, who is smiling proudly and trying not to show it. “And from a Frankenstein with 60-year-old corpse hands, it’s _really_ good.”

“Thanks, cunt,” he says sweetly. Trixie runs his hands over the delicate stitches. Katya’s followed the pattern perfectly, growing a pale new vine between two flowers where nothing had been before. It’s barely noticeable. It’s kind of better than it was. 

“I’ll be careful with it,” Trixie promises. 

“Why?” Katya takes it back from him, hovers it in front of Trixie’s face. He yanks in either direction, and Trixie flinches instinctively, but the stitches hold. “If you want, I can reinforce that whole panel. See? She’s good to go,” he says. He folds it, drops it neatly on the bed. “She can take it. If you’re like, scared of her, then she’s useless.” 

Trixie fixes him with a look. Katya sticks his tongue out. “I’m like, extremely clumsy,” Trixie tells him. Katya cracks up.

“I know, bitch! I’ve seen you.” Grinning, he leans in closer and gnaws at Trixie’s knee abruptly with his perfect teeth. Trixie leaps backwards, squeaking with startled laughter. Katya ducks down, peeps just his eyes up at him from the edge of the bed, Pennywise realness. “You’re not so bad,” he tells him. “You’re a big fuckin’ goon in a dress, but I’ve seen worse.”

Trixie makes like he’s gonna swat at him, laughs when Katya whac-a-moles down behind the bed once more. He waits until he reappears before he says, casually, “Maybe I just don’t want to fuck it up again.” 

Katya regards him. He clambers up beside him, fixes him with calm, warm eyes. “You won’t.” 

“Bitch, like you can possibly know that!” Trixie protests. Katya blinks. 

“It’s just a stupid dress, Tracy,” he says. His high cheekbones push up in restrained amusement.

“It’s my favorite dress,” Trixie snaps, “even if it’s stupid.” 

Katya wheezes with laughter, falls on his back. Trixie’s teeth feel sharp with helplessness. Katya wriggles around, finds the dress with a flailing hand and pulls it into his arms like a teddy bear, gives it a little snuggle. “You are such a _goddamn quee-ah,_” he rasps. “And a pain in my ass. _God,_ you’re cute, you softie bitch.” 

Trixie’s ears go pink. He can feel them. He watches Katya. He’s got a decent growth of stubble after just a couple days out of face; tomorrow he’ll shave it off again before they paint, and Trixie will miss the scratch when they kiss, even as he relishes the softness. “Just tell me, can you, like, can you try to tell me what you need?” he asks. “I just want to give it to you.” 

Katya stops laughing. He pushes himself up on his elbows. “I have everything I need, mama,” he says. His smile’s fading away, little by little, but his expression stays soft.

“But what about what you want,” Trixie says.

Katya straightens up, leaning back on his hands. He squints at Trixie, tilts his head thoughtfully at him. Trixie wants to lean forward and bite the tip of his nose, but he wants an answer more.

But before Katya can speak, the doorbell rings. He lets out a wordless, happy warble and scrambles up to collect their brunch. Trixie watches the light change as his shadow chases him out of the room.

\---

Trixie’s in the drag room when he hears the front door ease open and then slam shut. He looks up from the wig he’s brushing out, a colossal blonde unit with the kind of waves that make you seasick. Brian’s supposed to be teaching yoga—sundown candlelit bliss flow something something, all _sotto voce_ and _Sail Away._ “What happened?” he yells over his shoulder. “Is it cancelled?”

“_You’re_ cancelled, Trixie Mattel,” says a deep voice, amused and raspy. 

Trixie leaps to his feet at once with a scream. The wig snatches itself, slinking out of his hands and onto the floor with no small amount of dramatic flair. Trixie races into the living room and flings himself into Bob’s arms, sending his two massive suitcases clattering down in the process. 

“Get off me!” Bob demands, squeezing him tight. “Bitch, I wasn’t in _prison._” 

“Oh my god, let me love you for ten fucking seconds,” Trixie shrills. He holds Bob at arm’s length, looking him over. He narrows his eyes. Bob narrows them right back, owlish behind his specs. “You won, didn’t you,” Trixie says. He laughs, giddy and wild. “I know it. Oh my god, I missed you!”

“I have no idea if I won,” Bob says seriously. “Jesus Christ, Trixie, you’re _vanishing,_ did you just stop eating altogether without me to buy you takeout?”

“You do know,” Trixie insists. “You won!”

“I don’t!” Bob shoots back. “They filmed like four different endings, and -“ He catches himself, looking sheepish. “You are the devil, bitch.”

“You made it to the end!” Trixie yowls. “I _knew_ it!”

“You are going to break _all of our glassware,_” Bob hisses, wrapping Trixie up tight like that could possibly contain him. 

“You can buy us more with your fucking prize money,” Trixie enthuses. “C’mon, put your shit down, you have to tell me everything.” 

They settle in the kitchen. Trixie feels strangely self-conscious, eager to play hostess even though this is Bob’s house, too. He wishes he had a—like, what, a cheese plate? Crudités? His eyes cut over to the two plates and forks in the sink, dotted with crumbs. He resists the urge to start cleaning immediately. Even grading on a curve, it’s a criminally faggy impulse. “Was it amazing?” he asks instead. “How’d Kim do? What’s _Ru-fucking-Paul_ like?” 

Bob’s smiling with half his mouth, tracing little patterns along the grain of the formica counter. Trixie watches his face. “You know I can’t tell you anything,” he says. 

“Since when did you become such a fucking narc?” Trixie laughs. “C’mon, she can’t hear us all the way out in WeHo.” 

“Bitch, _Ru-fucking-Paul _has spies everywhere,” Bob counters. “It was fucking weird. I didn’t—“ He pauses, collecting his thoughts. There’s an air about him that’s settled, calmer than usual. It makes Trixie’s limbs feel frantic, the sharp edge of a shriek behind his teeth. “I didn’t realize how much I was gonna miss, like, people. That shit is not easy.” 

“I get it, you missed me. Now, come on. The tea. I’m dying, girl, please.” Trixie pounds a fist down. The forks in the sink rattle. They both glance at them, then Bob looks back at Trixie with his mouth a serious line.

“If you want to know what it’s like,” Bob says slowly, “why don’t you just go?”

Trixie laughs. Bob does not. 

“Trixie,” he says. “Listen, they asked—like, production asked us all for names. Girls for next season.”

Trixie feels his smile fade. He understands the words, but he’s not a native speaker. His brain scrambles. 

Loudly and slowly, Bob elaborates, “Kim and I both gave them your name. I mean, as a joke, but still—“

“No, you didn’t,” Trixie says. His voice comes out so weak. 

Maybe the time spent sequestered at a Radisson really got to him, because Bob just says, simply, “Of course we did. You annoy the shit out of me and you’re the worst dancer I’ve ever met—“

“Oh, fuck you,” Trixie interrupts, “we both know _Pearl_—“

“But you’re _good,_ bitch.” Trixie’s face heats. “And it’s not cute to act like you don’t know it,” Bob goes on. “I’ve seen you fully pop a boner at the sight of your own reflection in a car window; you _know_ you’re everything. So film a fucking audition and go show everybody. Okay?”

“That’s, like, there were a lot of unnecessarily personal attacks in that pep talk, but go off,” Trixie says after a moment, struggling to keep the quiver out of his voice. 

Bob swipes his hands together to wash them of the moment. “I’m not gonna sit around sucking your dick about this. Do it or don’t. Just—it’s there. Everything is gonna change really soon. Shit is gonna move fast. I’d like to see you keep up on those spindly legs.”

“Bitch—“ Trixie opens his mouth, then closes it. His hands get restless. He scoots off his stool and goes to the sink, gets the water good and hot. It’s like scratching an itch, cleaning the few dishes, solving a small and tangible problem. “Thank you,” he says to the pink sponge in his hand. 

“Don’t thank me.” Bob’s eyes are on him. “It doesn’t matter what I say if you don’t do it.” Trixie nods. 

Silence drapes over them, soft and light as gossamer. There’s no need to brush it away; it’s not hurting either of them. Bob’s tired, and Trixie’s throat is tight. After a minute, Bob nods with his chin at the pair of plates and forks dripping in the drying rack. 

“How’s all that going.” 

Trixie raises an eyebrow. “Um, just fine? It’s like four items. What, did I miss a spot?”

“No,” Bob says flatly. “All _that._” He grabs the forks and taps them across the countertop, making them chase each other a few inches in either direction. “Your freaky little double act. _Other_ Brian. The fleabag formerly known as Katya. I’m guessing she hasn’t, like, disappeared into the night with all your shit yet? Unless you actually bought that yourself.” He gestures one of the forks at Trixie’s shirt.

He glances down. It’s black, emblazoned with wispy white constellations and the name of Katya’s yoga studio. He threw it on without thinking, drawn to the way it smelled like Katya’s place, like the cheap detergent he uses, a scent that probably has a name like “Garden Fresh” and would be impossible to find in nature. His neck goes warm. “The act is cute,” he tells him obliquely. “It’s fun. We stole your whole Wednesday audience. Eat my ass, they’re mine now. But maybe you can guest-host sometime, if you’re really nice to me.”

Bob just shoots him straight through the forehead with his laser eyes. Trixie sizzles. There’s a lot of forehead to get through. “We’re good,” he says after a moment. “He’s good. The fleas took some getting used to, but now it’s like, _whatever,_ like, they add character.”

Bob shudders. “I kept having nightmares of the two you staring me down like the twins from _The Shining,_ like…”

“Come _slay_ with us, Bob,” Trixie singsongs, making his eyes wide. “For ever, and ever, and—“

Bob rasps out a laugh. “I would actually _love_ to kill you both with an axe right about now.”

Trixie squawks. Bob sets the forks down and hoists himself up, trudging back to his suitcases where they lay in the entryway. “There’s a very real part of me that would like to literally hire someone to deal with these,” he says, righting the bags and rolling them toward the drag room, “but, I’m gonna be a big girl about this.” Trixie follows close behind.

“A suspiciously big girl,” he agrees. Bob swivels like he’s going to back one of the suitcases over Trixie’s toe, and he dances backwards, laughing. Bob steers over the threshold and flings the suitcases down in the center of the room to start unpacking. Trixie grabs a fistful of hangers from the closet and hovers nearby. “Save your winnings, I can help.”

“Look at you, being sweet!” Bob unzips the first bag and throws it open. “You hoping I won’t notice that the reanimated classroom skeleton that you’ve been boning’s left her shit all over my half of the room?”

Trixie cackles, taking a badly-wrinkled gold leotard out of Bob’s hands and slipping it over a hanger. “Listen, what’s your problem with him?” he asks as he brings it over to the closet. “He’s—“ What. _Wonderful. My favorite person. _“He’s not like you think,” he decides. “You’d like him, actually, if you got to know him.”

Bob looks at Trixie seriously from the floor. “I _do_ like him. I never—no, I never said I didn’t like him. Look at this one! I stood in this fucking dress for like eight hours. I’d be _thrilled_ if I never had to see it again.” 

“Same!” Trixie takes the dress, a one-shoulder number covered in turquoise sequins, from Bob’s outstretched hands. “You did call him a lying junkie whore, if my memory serves,” he adds. His memory does serve. He can still hear it in his head, can feel the muscles of Brian’s back twitching in response under his hand. 

“You know what, you’re right, that was insensitive,” Bob says. “I should’ve said tweaker.” 

“Oh my _god,_” Trixie groans, but he laughs. Katya would. 

On the floor, Bob is taking out the silk bags where he stores his many wigs. Some are big, holding voluminous waves and halos of curls, but Trixie knows most of them contain every shade of Tough-as-Nails-Busdriver Wig known to man. “Listen, girl, you both do whatever works for you, but she’s—you know, y’all have a lot in common, but you’re also not like her at all,” he says. 

“I know,” Trixie agrees. “Like, I’m glamorous and in the prime of my youth, for one thing.” He’s still got his hands open, waiting for more things to shake out and hang, but he feels a little like clenching them instead.

Bob snorts. “I’m mostly talking reliable. Like, you show up. Nobody wants you there, granted, but still. You show up. And, look, I’m sure she doesn’t want you to know all this, but I remember her from way back when, when you were still getting your heels under you back in Mil-wah-kee, bitch. She’s messy. She’s got _baggage._ Like, a _three-piece luggage set._”

“It’s great,” Trixie says, smiling against the prickle of tension between his eyes. “So many compartments for me to put all my stuff.” 

Bob looks up at him. “I can shut the fuck up about this, you know. It’s none of my business. I do actually know that.” He unrolls a shimmery purple garment, and several pairs of balled-up tights scatter across the floor like mice. They both yelp in surprise.

“No, listen, you’re an asshole, but, don’t,” Trixie says as he takes the purple gown from Bob. He hangs and shelves it, jams the heel of his hand hard into one eye socket where he can feel a dull pain suddenly building. Katya knows a little spot in the meat of Trixie’s palm that turns a headache into harmless, pearlescent fuzz when squeezed. It hurts a bit, how his bony fingers clamp on, but when he lets go Trixie can never hold back a groan of relief. Katya always looks so pleased with himself, so proud.

He sighs. “I don’t know. You’re right. And I’m never going to say that again, so, like, enjoy the moment.” Bob, for his part, has the decency to only look the tiniest bit smug. Trixie goes on, “He _does_ want me to know, you know. Like, he’s told me everything, I think. Whatever the closest I can get to ‘everything’ is. But. I keep fucking up. It’s like he’s talking in code sometimes.” Trixie turns back to the dresses in the closet. “Like, he’s trying to tell me something about himself and I just—every time, I do the wrong thing. And I’m gonna lose him, girl. I’m gonna fuck it up so bad that he won’t give me another shot.”

Trixie hears Bob snap open his other suitcase and clamber to his feet. “You know,” he says, walking not to Trixie but to his vanity, “this is where that old saying comes from, which I believe Ben Franklin coined. Let me see if I have it right: ‘Sister dick will make you sick’...?” 

Trixie laughs loudly despite himself. “Well, we don’t all have access to fresh, organic your-mom’s-dick like you do,” he says. “So, some of us have to compromise.”

Bob howls for a long minute. Trixie feels himself loosen, watching him. His shoulders settle back an inch. “First of all,” Bob says finally, “he’s not exactly a hot commodity. Neither one of you can, I’d say, do better. I don’t think you need to worry about losing him.” 

“You are such a bitch, go back to the Four Seasons,” Trixie shrieks.

Bob ignores this. “Why’d you start doing drag?” he asks suddenly. He starts picking over Katya’s makeup and scooping it to one side of the tabletop with a surprising amount of care. 

Trixie shrugs. “Same reason you did? I love attention and you can’t do much with a GI Joe’s outfit. A quick trip down the pink aisle could’ve saved everyone so much trouble. I could’ve been a CPA, Roberta! I could’ve done _taxes!_” 

“Or maybe,” Bob drones over Trixie’s well-worn bit, “you’re an artist. And this is a fun, hands-on way to do your art. And you like making people laugh.” Bob gestures between them. “That’s what it was for me, too.”

“Will you let me know if you ever accomplish that dream?” Trixie asks, chin in hand. “I’m really rooting for you.” 

Bob swats at him. “Not everybody paints a fucking clown face on, is what I’m saying. You cunt. Some girls are just trying to make their eyes pop.” He sweeps a hand over Katya’s red lipsticks and dark shadows. “I mean, you see what I mean? She’s not painting for the International Space Station, bitch.” He waves at Trixie’s vanity. “Different brains.”

Trixie suddenly remembers something Katya said the first time they got in face together, about when she was first starting out: _It was such a gag to feel like a girl, to get into all the parts of me that make more sense when I look like this._ He thinks of her staring at her face in the mirror, looking pretty and lost, of her grasping at Trixie’s breastplate like Trixie could feel it. 

“I’m not like her,” Trixie realizes aloud. He feels it, a cold weight, all the way down his spine. It sinks into him, drops into his belly like a stone. “I’m not like that.” 

“No.” Bob leans over and puts a hand on Trixie’s wrist, gives it a squeeze. “But it’s okay. You’re not really like anything. Don’t take it too hard.” 

Trixie laughs, all chalk dust, a puff of smoke. He pictures Brian beside him in his bed, making soft, contented sounds as he burrows into Trixie in his sleep, annoyingly close. He pictures Katya crushing her solo number last Wednesday, leaping into the air, coming down in a split that would have torn Trixie in half like a sheet of loose-leaf, had him sent off to the morgue in multiple shipments. 

He thinks of the hard line of her nose, the way her lips go soft when she smiles. _Let me keep my skin on,_ she’d said. 

He’s not like her. He’s not like that. He doesn’t have to be.

He doesn’t have to do that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh man you know how i feel about feedback. (i love it.) this story feels a little outside the box for me, and so all your thoughts and feelings are just more appreciated than i can say. things are gonna get weird from here on out, but I promise i know where it's going and i think you'll like it. thank you for sticking with me; there'll be more soon!


	4. just do what's fun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which trixie does not keep her skin on.
> 
> I know I've yelled a little about the [playlist](https://www.tinyurl.com/stutterwott) for this fic, but I highly recommend especially the songs "Mirror" by IDER and "Door" by Caroline Polachek as listening for this chapter.
> 
> thank you so much to everyone who's been so kind about this story; i'm so grateful people are going on this weird little journey with me. the sexy and talented [joanneelizabeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/joanneelizabeth/pseuds/joanneelizabeth), [mattepinkallshades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattepinkallshades/pseuds/mattepinkallshades), and [connyhascontrol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/connyhascontrol/pseuds/connyhascontrol) must be shouted out in particular; there's no one else i'd rather perform profane and hideous blood rites alongside. thank you for being so wonderful.
> 
> and [beanierose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanierose/pseuds/beanierose): you deserve all the love you get and more. i suspect i'd be completely lost in the woods without you, but i'm really glad i don't have to know what that's like. you're the chardonnay to my turkey.

Bob’s off on his millionth social call since getting back, catching up with everyone he’d left behind during his recent mysterious trip to “visit family.” Wink, wink. Katya’s teaching later, but first he’s hitting up a twelve-step meeting on Robinson, a gay one he usually likes. He’s been edgy all morning, dodging Trixie’s hands and chewing hard on his knuckles. Trixie gives him space, plays with Instagram filters, takes a few sneaky pictures of him across the table with dog ears to make him laugh when he’s in the right mood, later.

“I’m qualifying today,” he explains after a while, drifting towards the door. “You know what that means? Doing a fun little vagina monologue about getting, like, trying to get sober. Like, I’ve done it before, but it’s never. Y’know.” He shrugs. Clean-shaven, and with his shoulders caved in in his all-black ensemble, he looks almost adolescent. “It’s not the _most_ fun, dredging up the ol’ rock bottom and everything.”

Trixie puts a hand over his heart. “Rock bottom,” he repeats. “So you’re gonna tell them about that moldy old problem-pattern frock you wore the other night? God, you _are_ brave.”

That gets a loud, hacking cough out of him. “_You’re_ my rock bottom,” he says, rushing back for a kiss before patting himself down for his wallet and phone and heading out the door. “I hate you. I’ll see you later, you dumb bitch.”

Now, Trixie’s got the house to himself. A day full of it. He washes and moisturizes his face and marches into the drag room to settle at the vanity. Okay. 

Off to the races.

He lays out his brushes, the palettes he’ll need, his whole arsenal. Makes a mise en place of neutral tones, soft pink—daytime shades, commuter colors. He puts some music on his phone and gets to work.

Here’s a wild concept: some people, on their days off, do something completely unrelated to their means of income! Some people hike or cook or—like, work out? Do laundry! Go see a film! Try to start reading _A Little Life_ like they keep lying and saying they’ve already done!

Trixie looks at his face in the mirror, sheened with moisturizer, bare but for the muppety purple brows he’s gluing down. He’s not some people. Obviously. Much to his chagrin. Sorry, mom. 

_I’m not like her._ He keeps turning this over and over between his fingers like a lucky penny while he waits for the glue to dry. It catches the light, glinting in his eyes. He’s not. Seeing Katya for the first time wasn’t like meeting a character Brian played, not even when he got on the mic and, blinking in the gold frontlight, put on that startlingly solid Russian accent. It was like realizing he’d been sleeping with him for months and had only ever seen half of his face. 

He presses the flat of his tongue to the glue stick and gives his brows one more layer for good luck. Nobody’s going to see this but him, but he wants to get it right. He’s a Virgo, he’s been told. According to one of Katya’s crunchy-ass fellow yogis, he’s actually a double Virgo, and when he asked what that was supposed to mean to him she only smiled serenely and said, “That’s _such_ a double Virgo thing to ask.” Behind her, Katya, pretending to organize a stack of rental mats, doubled over in silent laughter at the look on Trixie’s face. 

He sets his brows and starts painting, same as he always does. He watches his face go smooth with primer, foundation, powder, just two dark eyes blinking out of a level, toneless mask. It took him so long to get good at this, to figure out how to transpose the beautiful, strange doll’s face in his mind onto his skin. Now it’s like breathing. 

How did Katya do it? When did he know? He never talks about it. Trixie’s never asked, though. He pictures him now as a teenager, angry and lanky and blessed with natural androgyny, realizing with a messy swipe of his mom’s drugstore lipstick that this other thing lived inside of him, too, that she was waiting to be born. 

At work, Trixie paints other women all day. According to the friendly signage all over the store, he’s there to offer tutorials on makeup trends, but in reality, most of his clients just want to know what they’re _supposed_ to do. For their face shape, for their problem areas, for their skin. He always tells them the same thing, a little smugly: honey, you’re not _supposed_ to do anything. Just do what’s _fun._ But now, for some reason, he’s loading up a shadow brush with rose-gold pigment and he just feels… marooned. He hovers the brush in midair, thinking. What would Katya do? Katya favors a smoky paint, dark and dramatic to offset the blue of her eyes. She paints with what she’s got, rather than crafting a whole new set of bones on top of it. 

_Oooh, just do what’s fuuuun._ Bitch, what about when none of it’s fun? Is he… is he maybe kind of an asshole?

He stares himself down, considers the shape of his eyes like they’re someone else’s. He can’t do it like he usually does. Can’t do it like Katya, either. With a little concentration, the geometry untangles across his vision, guiding his hands. He’s painted a thousand cut creases on the women of Los Angeles—that’s two thousand, actually, if you want to be cute—and talked them through his technique in simple, clear terms. Surely he can pull it off on his own face. 

He picks warm shades, gentle ones. He’s not selling fierceness or half-price well drinks. He’s not selling anything. Just trying to make his eyes pop, right. He layers on that same pink shadow, manages a tawny brown crease, dusts some burnished gold at the inner corners of the eyes. Not bad. 

It is a feat of truly monastic restraint to take up his trusty black liner and draw only a small, tasteful wing on either eye. He blinks at the full effect, feeling sunblind. It suits the shape of his eyes. They’re pretty like this, sweet. A girl’s eyes. A laugh bubbles up under his Adam’s apple. He grabs his phone, which is still crooning one of the unpronounceable Russian pop chanteuses Katya likes to paint to, and takes a quick selfie to show him later. He feels a minor glow in his chest at the thought. He’ll be pleased, maybe, impressed. 

He lifts his eyebrows to his forehead and fills them in. He contours his jaw, freehands his cheekbones and nose. He’s got a maxed-out credit card he usually uses for this part, drawing her face the way you draw a weapon in a duel, but today he’s disarmed. He blends and blends and blends, softer, softer, softer. 

This is usually when he starts to vanish, when she starts to appear. Now she’s hovering somewhere in between. She knocks her foot into the leg of the vanity by accident and her reflection wavers like a mirage. The lip liner she wanted rolls off the table and under her chair. “Motherfucker,” she mutters. She bends at the waist, groping, comes up with a handful of dust and a few stray sequins clinging to her fingers. Red. Katya, that fucking menace. 

She drops to her hands and knees and fumbles for it. Grace, dignity, beauty. Face-down, ass-up. Whatever little spark of pride she felt moments ago has faded. She’s bristling at the smallness of the room, at the futility of this whole endeavor. Like, for what? For _what,_ exactly? She grabs the stupid liner in her fist and eases back into her chair. She’s going to be a beautiful fucking fishy woman just out of spite. She’s done dumber things, and for worse reasons.

Katya’s mouth is so lush, so lovely, that when she draws it on she barely has to exaggerate it at all, just add a little shape, glossy hills above a gently sloping scarlet valley. Trixie’s lips are thin, a solid blank canvas but not much to work with on their own. She grits her teeth against the urge to redraw them completely. Not today, gal. She adds a touch more arch to her Cupid’s bow, fills out her bottom lip in barely-there pink, and leaves it. Self-control. She has it, mama. 

She mixes one of her candy-colored blushes with one of Bob’s, a dusky rose. The bitch can afford to share. Trixie purses her lips to apple her cheeks out for the blush, marrying it together with the rest of the shades. This always makes her happy, but now she just watches the color spread over her face with mounting disdain. She doesn’t feel glamorous. This isn’t Trixie’s face. She doesn’t know what this is or why she’s doing it. She drives on, though, jaw clenched, refining and marrying and layering, she is _going_ to be pretty, she is _going_ to get this right. 

She’s almost there. She glances away from her cheekbones to the whole face, makes eye contact for just a second. It’s. 

No. No, something is wrong. The balance is off. It’s not the color, it’s not the paint. What is it. It’s—like, it’s her, it’s her face. This is why she covers it up, this is why Trixie exists, this is, because—she looks like, she looks—

She takes a deep breath. Highlighter will fix it. So pretty. There’s absolutely no need to get her goddamn panties in a twist. She twirls a big fluffy brush in her favorite iridescent powder, breathing slowly through her nose. There’s nothing to fix. Nothing is wrong. Take it easy, calm down. 

It’s just. Of course this feels strange! She hasn’t done it like this since she was brand-new with no technique, a baby queen taking her first staggery steps in a pair of god-awful secondhand Kenneth Cole Reactions. Looking herself up and down in her grandma’s full-length bedroom mirror, thinking what now. What’s going to happen to you now. 

Now she knows what she’s doing and her hands don’t want to, they want the mask instead, they fought so hard for it. She feels stupid, she feels ugly. It’s fine, it’s fine.

She makes herself look. 

A face blinks out at her from the mirror, a face that looks younger than Trixie’s, startled, a face with an open mouth and wet eyes, no, _no,_ why are they wet?

She lets the brush drop. A shimmering constellation scatters across the vanity. Her palms are open, fingers spread. The girl’s hands are up, too. She looks terrified. “Easy,” she whispers. Trixie knocks her head back, stares up at the ceiling, which is too bright and swimming. 

She doesn’t want to look at her, the girl in the mirror, the one that is her but isn’t Trixie. But she knows she’s there. She reaches forward sightlessly instead, presses her palm flat against the glass, keeping her eyes carefully skyward. 

She stays there for a minute, holding her. Steadying both of them. She can hear the girl’s shuddery breath, feels her own chest tight and aching. Her heart will break if she has to watch that girl crying. “You’re okay,” she tells her. “Deep breaths. You’re completely fine.”

Maybe she speaks it. Maybe she thinks it. Either way, the girl hears it, and she starts calming down. Trixie’s ribs expand like unfastening a cincher. “There, that’s good. That’s way better. See?”

She could stop. She can take it all off, banish the girl in the mirror back to wherever she came from, hiding in Trixie’s body, in the little space behind her lungs. 

But no. This is the least she deserves. She can give her this. And Trixie said she was going to do this, and she’s a double Virgo, so. 

Carefully, she grabs the hair she’d picked out for this occasion and brings it into her lap. It’s one of Katya’s, soft loose waves, the same shade as Trixie’s eyebrows and eyelashes. Trixie doesn’t own a single unit the color of her natural hair. She bows her head and puts it on.

The girl in the mirror fusses over her hair, fluffs it just so, shakes the waves apart carefully with her long fingers. Her delicate brows knit together in concentration. She’s—she’s not glamorous, that is clear. She’s not exactly fish. She’s raw, rough around the edges, even with her solid beat. But there’s something about her, a certain sharpness to her expression, that is kind of. Like.

“You’re pretty,” Trixie tells her quietly. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you.”

The girl’s face relaxes a little. Galvanized, Trixie gives her a small smile and presses on.

She preps her lashes with glue—two little stacks she stole from Katya’s stash, made of maybe like four pairs instead of her usual eight—and blows on them lightly. She’s not used to applying them to her actual fucking lash line, and she prepares for a battle.

The right eye is a real bitch, but by some small miracle she places the left one in a single try. That’s it. She waits for the glue to dry with her eyes cut away from the mirror, to the tumble of her and Katya’s discarded pads in the corner of the room.

When she feels ready, she flutters them back and takes it in. 

The girl looks better than before, more settled in herself. She is, she’s cute, she’s pretty, her big brown doe eyes and her thoughtful mouth. Still, her expression is apprehensive. Trixie doesn’t want to let her down, either. So much bad shit has happened to this girl, and it’s all over her face. Everything she’s ever seen, every blow she’s absorbed so Trixie didn’t have to. She’s a bruise, fresh and tender. She hurts all over. “You’re okay. I swear,” Trixie tells her again. She looks like she wants to believe it. 

Katya doesn’t have this. There’s no way. She and her reflection are one and the same. The first time she got her paint right, Katya must have come screaming through the glass at her with a manic, joyful laugh, unleashed like a demon from a puzzle box. Every time Katya lets her out, she gets stronger, more powerful, more beautiful.

She’d really wanted to give this girl to Katya, show her that she understood, make her this fragile offering. She can’t. This girl is for her. She sits with her for a little while. Sometimes they look at each other, sometimes they study their nails. Then, the phone starts playing Lucinda Williams, and they both perk up. The girl starts lip syncing along, almost absentmindedly. She’s not performance-ready, not by a long shot, but she’s committed, bitch. When Trixie realizes what she’s doing, she throws her head back and laughs. The girl does, too, showing all her teeth. Trixie queues up “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “Evangeline,” and she sings along in the empty house, as loud as she likes. The girl lip syncs with her, selling it as best she can. 

Then it’s time. Trixie swipes open her camera and takes a few pictures of her. They look all right. “I’ll see you around,” Trixie tells her. Carefully, gently, she dismantles her, wipes her away. 

This girl is just for her. 

When she’s gone, dissolved off, back where she came from, it turns out that Trixie has vanished, too. Brian is all that’s left, looking at himself in the place where the girl used to be. The only sign the girl ever existed is the face staring out from the screen of his phone, the lips still slightly parted in surprise, the large brown eyes halfway between alarm and hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know how gently trixie holds her autoharp? that's me cradling your feedback in my hands. thank you for reading!


	5. make an arrangement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> katya gets an offer. this one really makes the most of that E rating.
> 
> i am so lucky to have a support system of brilliant fellow writers: [joanneelizabeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/joanneelizabeth/pseuds/joanneelizabeth), [mattepinkallshades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattepinkallshades/pseuds/mattepinkallshades), and [connyhascontrol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/connyhascontrol/pseuds/connyhascontrol), you are all so wonderful and talented and kind. thank you thank you.
> 
> [beanierose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanierose/pseuds/beanierose) is a rare creature. i'm sure that anyone who's on here reading my work is familiar with hers, and knows it to be profoundly empathetic and soft and beautiful. she's exactly that way, and i am very, very grateful to her for holding my hand through this story and all things.

Bob’s filling in for him at _HI!!!_ tonight. _i’m literally so sorry, im a piece of shit,_ he’d texted Katya that morning.

_well yes mary hello, this is not news,_ she’d responded, before he could say anything.

_we’re doing a special like afterhours in-store event with the pat mcgrath people and there’s no way id be able to get in face in time after,_ he’d tapped out, ignoring the shade.

All of this would be absolutely true. If he had been on the schedule.

She won’t even miss him. Bob’s so killer on the mic, and the hype around her has never been hotter since she got back in town. And getting Bob to paint shoulder-to-shoulder with Katya makes him feel gleefully sneaky, like he’s a pair of CGI Lindsey Lohans. He kind of wishes he could see the whole thing, watch them fall in weird genius love, like he knows they will. There’s a little pulse of jealousy in the back of his throat, which is stupid, but stupidity’s never stopped him before. This whole idea is stupid. It’s so, so stupid. It’s so stupid, it just might not horribly backfire. Or maybe it will! Maybe this is how he ruins every good thing in his life! Bye!

It’s been a week since that strange, quiet off-day he spent painting, and all he’s done is tried to figure out the best way to do this. Because he understands, now, on some level he never grasped before, what Katya can’t seem to put into words: the thrill of being seen as _Katya,_ the one in the mirror, the one she sees when she looks at herself. _Believe it or not, there was a time when men would pay good money for a taste of all this._ Those men—those men who didn’t deserve her, who couldn’t come close to understanding even a fucking fraction of who she is—they saw something he couldn’t, at least, not at first. _Katya_ was the only part of her they knew, and they wanted it badly enough that they’d put a price on it, whatever price she was asking. Knowing her, not nearly enough.

All week, he’s wanted to grab her and shake her and yell: _I get it! I see it now!_ But he spends his nights mouthing other people’s words for ones and fives. He knows talk is cheap.

He clocks himself in the mirror before he gets in his cab and heads to the Basement a couple hours later. Category is, Butch Queen’s First Time in Boy-Drags at a Ball. Straight-passing, maybe, til he opens his mouth. It’ll have to do.

Is he an idiot? He’s probably an idiot. But he’s been an idiot this whole time and Katya is still here. Why should he break that streak tonight?

He’s able to catch the tail-end of the show from way in the back: Bob’s doing her Celine Dion number, which always destroys. Sharing a bill with Bob is not for the faint of heart, so of course Katya is living her fucking fantasy. He keeps catching sight of her white-blond head flailing around backstage as she thrashes with laughter in the wings. When she emerges for their final bow, his tongue goes completely dry in his mouth.

He’s seen this look on the hanger, but never on her body. It’s a black sequined bodysuit, long-sleeved and high-necked and glittering every time she moves. Bare thighs, tall leather boots. Her hair is long and blond, her lips blood-red. She looks like if the Black Swan were a fucking cock destroyer. 

He needs a drink. But he’s not drinking tonight. He wishes he had the ability or the temperament to calm himself with a cigarette. He doesn’t. Besides, he knows what he’s actually craving, what his hands and mouth are really starving for. He jams his fists in his pockets and heads out, goes to the back exit, waits for her there.

He knows her deal. She’ll come out for a smoke before she starts getting out of face, head bowed to protect her little flame and then tilted back on the exhale, exultant. His throat burns in sympathy. Everything is hot. 

When the door from the green room finally thuds open, Brian’s heart scrabbles up into his throat. He kicks off the wall as Katya works her lighter with a shimmering black-tipped nail, sparking it with a sound like sucked teeth. 

“Hey,” he says. His voice actually cracks. _Girl._ He clears it, and says again, “Hey. Hey, Katya. It’s Katya, right?” 

Her eyes fly up from the lighter to his face. Her nose wrinkles, but her eyes brighten, pleasure and surprise. “No, bitch, it’s Elisabeth Shue,” she says. “Easy mistake to make, though.” She takes a step closer, arm out for a hug. “Hi! I thought you had to—” 

“I don’t have much time,” Brian interrupts. He takes a step back, keeps his arms crossed over his chest. Katya stops in her tracks. She’s still reaching out for him, but she draws back a little. “I lied,” Brian goes on. “I—I told her I was going to the store, I came here instead. Didn’t know what else to say.” 

Katya’s arm drops. She takes another drag of her cigarette, squinting at Brian through her lashes. “The fuck are you talking about?” she asks. “Told who? Bob? What store?”

“No, no, my…” Jesus Christ. He squares his shoulders. He wants to melt into the pavement, but he soldiers on. “I saw you the other night,” he tries. “Performing here. I, I never come to places like this, I swear, I just needed a drink and it was open, but I—you were onstage, and I thought, I don’t know what I thought, I just felt—” 

“_What?_” Katya demands. “The fuck’s come over you, are you sick?” She comes toward him with her hand extended like she’s going to try and feel his forehead. He rears back, plasters himself against the wall. 

“No!” He shakes his head once. “No, god, I’m just nervous. I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do this.” 

Katya stares at him like he’s growing a new head out of either eye socket. “Do _what?_” she asks again. A lock of hair falls over her eyes, and she blows it away with a huff before it can glue itself to her lipstick.

“I’ve never done this before, I just, I want to, if you’re free, if you’re available,” Brian babbles, “I heard… someone told me you might be willing to… to make an arrangement.” 

Katya goes still. Brian watches the words hum around her pretty face like reverberations from a struck bell. “What is this,” she says, very quietly now. “What are you trying to do.”

“Look, can we go somewhere more private?” Brian asks her. “I literally don’t know how to do this, I don’t know how this works, I just… I want to, like, get to know you.” 

Katya watches him. It’s dim back here. Her expression is hard to read. “Get to know me,” she repeats.

“Uh-huh.” Brian takes a tiny step toward her. She doesn’t move. He can see how she’s sunk her nails into her palms. He says, as carefully as he can, “I just think you’re so beautiful. I want—I mean, just tell me what you need from me. To make that happen.” 

“Maybe you can’t afford me, bitch,” she says. The streetlight above hollows her eyes when she lowers her head. “Some women might find this pretty fucking patronizing, you know. Insulting, maybe.” 

Brian’s stomach drops out. “Please, I don’t want that,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’m just. Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you. Please, Katya, I just keep thinking if I can’t have you I’m going to die.” 

It lands on her like sunlight, like breaking something green out of the ice. Her lip curls on one side, her eyebrows quirk for a half a second. “Well, that seems a touch melodramatic to me,” she says. She drops her cigarette on the ground, crushing it underfoot as she gets right into his space. She’s taller than him in her heels. Brian’s cock twitches with the dissonance. “This is what you want, huh,” she says. He nods mutely. 

She brings up her hand, strokes her press-ons over his cheek. “You wanna see my _manicure,_” she breathes, “wrapped around your _dick?_” 

He inhales her, cigarette smoke gilded with her perfume, violets exploding into bloom in the back of his throat. “I really, really do,” he tells her. “Please. I’ve never done it with a… with a girl like you before.” 

That makes her laugh, really laugh, a loud shrill yelp of it. “Honey, there aren’t any other girls like me,” she says. Her eyes are sharp on his, but her red mouth is curved up. “Okay, you know what, fuck it. Why don’t we go back to my place, does that sound nice? I’ll let you call me a cab.” 

“Oh my god, thank you,” he says. His heart is tight with actual gratitude. He fumbles his phone out of his pocket and hands it to her so she can put in her address. 

“And you’re not a cop, right?” Katya asks urgently, pointing a long finger at his nose. “You have to tell me, otherwise it’s entrapment!” 

He bites his lip. “I’m not a cop.” 

“Obviously not. You’re just a _closeted fuckin’ fag._ Though I guess that doesn’t exclude you from the force, does it.” She hands his phone back. “Just a little while. You think you can keep it in your pants until we get to mine?” 

Brian shrugs. “I’ve waited this long.” He checks the app. Less than a minute now, god save the gig economy. “Seriously,” he says quietly, “thank you.”

Katya smiles at him with her mouth closed. “What can I say? I love a charity case,” she teases. She reaches out and runs her thumb over his lip, down the bridge of his nose, without asking permission, like he’s just one of her accessories, something she owns. “You’re cute, though. Got no business coming at me so desperate. You’re on the run from your… ‘girlfriend?’” She hooks the air with her fingers. “‘Wife?’” 

“Wife,” Brian tells her, without thinking.

She laughs in his face. “Poor naive sweetheart. And her name is…” 

“Can we not?” Brian asks tersely. “I don’t wanna talk about her.”

Katya zips her lip. She’s practically vibrating, she loves this so much. “Uh-huh. And what should I call you?” she asks. She’s got both hands on him now, tracing over his face and ears with her long nails. Brian imagines being laid out under them, letting her rake them over his body, graze his dick. His spine prickles. “John, I’m guessing?” 

He shakes his head. “You can just call me Brian. That’s my name.”

She tilts her head at him. Her eyes are sharp and thoughtful. “Got a nice ring to it,” she decides, right before she pulls him in tight against her and gropes him through his jeans. Brian’s breath leaves him in a strangled gasp, and then his phone chimes loudly in his hand to indicate their car’s arrived.

“Not here, not here, please,” he whispers, pushing her away carefully. Katya shrieks with laughter, but keeps her distance. 

“Lemme go grab my shit,” she says, walking backwards towards the building. “Gawd, you’re _funny._ You’re feeling _shy,_ baby? Hold the driver for me.” 

The ride is quiet. The driver keeps his eyes on the road, only glancing once or twice into the backseat. When they get to Katya’s place, Brian gives him five stars and a generous tip; looking how they look together, he knows things could’ve gone a lot worse.

Katya lets him in and he hovers in the doorway like he’s never seen her place before. Crossing the threshold feels like walking on the moon. She’s click-clacking into the dark ahead of him, turning on lights as she goes. “I don’t normally like to bring tricks back here,” she says over her shoulder, “but you’ve got such a cute little face. And I’m pretty sure I could take you in a fight. But let’s not test it, okay?”

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Brian says quietly. 

“You most certainly are not.” She goes to her fridge, still in her tall boots, and bends at the waist to investigate its contents. 

“Katya, I’m not. I’d never hurt you.” Brian swallows. “I’d never.” Every mistake he’s ever made with her, every sick miscalculation, floats murkily to the glass front of his brain as he says it. _outlook not so good._

She stills. She stands up straight, closes the fridge. Brian suddenly gets really fascinated by the hem of his shirt. He hears Katya walking closer, _clack, clack, clack,_ but can’t look at her, not until she’s just inches away. Then, he looks up into her eyes. “Honey, I know,” she says. Her voice is like a silk scarf pulled along the nape of his neck. “You’re not that kind of boy.” 

He shakes his head. He dares to reach out, touch her arms through her second skin of glossy sequins. There’s a moment where they just stand there. She nuzzles her lips against his forehead. He’s sure she leaves a mark. 

“I’m gonna go slip into something a little more—like, what’s the word?” she says, stepping back. “A little more, I can fuck you in.” Brian shrieks with startled laughter, and her smile goes blinding. “Help yourself to anything in the fridge, but there’s not much there.” 

“I’ll be fine,” he says, shaking his head. “Thank you.” 

She jabs a finger at him again. “I’m so, so serious, bitch, don’t steal _anything._” 

“I’m not gonna!” Brian protests shrilly. “Wait, wait, before you go.” Katya turns back. “Like, should we talk about—now that you know I’m not a cop, like. How much do you want? I didn’t ask. What do I owe you?” 

Katya’s eyes narrow. After a beat, she says, “I’ll do whatever you want. For an hour. But I want everything you’ve got on you.” 

Brian’s hand goes to his back pocket, where his wallet is. “I don’t know what I’ve got.” 

Katya shrugs. “Doesn’t matter to me. But you’re leaving here with nothing.” Then she smiles, turns on her heel, and struts off to the bathroom down the hall. Brian sits down hard on the couch, like he doesn’t know where anything is.

He hardly moves while he waits. He’s got a text from Bob, twenty minutes old: _show was cute tonight. she’s psycho. just like you._

He smiles at it, but doesn’t respond. Nothing belongs in this space except the two of them. He can hear the shower running, can’t stop himself from picturing her with her hair pulled back, head tilted up slightly to protect her face, water running down the strong lines of her body and licking over her tattoos. His skin hums with a keyed-up, sharp ache. He lets himself touch, just a little, pressing the heel of his hand against his cock. It leaps up toward his palm like he didn’t jerk off right before he left for the venue, working himself over, fisting his dick and fucking himself open with a couple of fingers. He wants more but he forces himself to stay still, carry the hunger in his teeth like a loyal dog, waiting for her, until the shower turns off with a squeak and he practically tumbles to the floor.

There’s a long, long wait while Katya fusses in the bathroom, pads to her bedroom; Brian knows the sound of this floor under her bare feet. He does nothing, listening, then slowly gets up, stands there like a cadet, alert and straight-backed. He can feel his pulse in every part of him that’s flesh.

When she reemerges, he actually breathes, totally off-guard, _“Oh.”_ She laughs at him again, but she wouldn’t be standing there looking like that if she didn’t want exactly that reaction. She’s too smart for that.

Her long blonde hair is swept over one shoulder. She’s repainted her lips an even deeper, more lustrous scarlet. She’s in a sheer black robe, dotted with lace flowers, cinched tight around her waist and falling all the way to brush the floor at her bare feet. The robe’s opened enough at the chest to show him a sleek black bra with lightly padded cups. She’s wearing high-waisted black panties. They look like silk. Brian wants to feel them against his hands, against his face, to find out for sure.

“God, you look,” he starts, but doesn’t know how to finish. It all sounds stupid in his head, way too small or too grandiose. “_Jesus,_ Katya,” he says instead. 

She twirls, sending the robe rustling out in a dark storm around her. “Hello, hi,” she says, smiling at him. “You like what you see?”

“This is incredible. Oh, my god.” He comes closer. She stays where she is, her hands clasped neatly behind her back, letting him stare. He looks at the lingerie, then back up to her face. “You don’t perform in this,” he says stupidly.

She snorts out a laugh. Her long neck flushes very slightly pink. “No. Nope, I don’t.” 

He reaches out a hand, slowly, so she could stop him or pull back if she wanted. She doesn’t. He presses his fingertips to the robe, slips them inside to graze the fabric of the panties. Definitely silk. “So…” he swallows. “So you’ve just, you just have this stuff.” 

Katya’s eyes cut away for just a second. When they meet his again, they’re bright, cautious. “Uh-huh.” 

Brian nods mutely. She’s kept these pretty things folded up in a drawer, somewhere, away from him, maybe modeling them for herself, maybe only running her hands over them when he’s not around, maybe not thinking of them at all. He hears his own voice in his mind, only a few weeks back: _girl, no, gross._ He had no idea. He never does. He could’ve had this so much sooner.

Katya raises an eyebrow at him in a move he’d swear she cribbed from Bob. “What?” she demands. “Got a problem with that, _bitch?_” 

Brian laughs sharply. “No! Oh my god. No. No, I’m just.” He brings up both hands, strokes them gently down her arms again. Her eyes flicker closed. She looks so demure, so soft. “I’m just taking it in. Taking you in. You look so good.” He wants to brush her nose against his, but he’s got manners. Her paint’s already been through a lot tonight. “You’re so pretty,” he tells her, like it’s a secret. 

They live there for a minute, and then Katya shakes her head once. She takes a firm step back, out of the fog of it. “Come on,” she says. She holds out a hand toward him. Her long nails glint in the lamplight. “Bedroom’s back this way, if you want. Unless you just wanna—y’know, _get to know me_ out here.”

“No, the bedroom sounds nice,” Brian says. He puts his hand in hers, doesn’t move. Can’t.

Her eyes dart up from their fingers to his face. “What’s the problem?” she asks. “You are so _jumpy._” 

He blurts out, “Can I kiss you? Or is that—is that, like, a rule? Do you not do that?”

Katya stares at him with an expression he can’t decipher at all. Then she grabs his face in both hands and jams it down toward hers with bruising force, filling his mouth with her tongue. Brian dissolves into it, lets her lead the way, lets her take whatever she wants. He loops his arms around her waist, clutches at her shoulder blades, squeezing her as close as she’ll let him. She’s not tucked now; her cock is pressing flush against the crook of his thigh, and if he angles his hips just a fraction she’ll feel his, so hard for her, against her own. 

“I don’t have ‘rules.’ You watch too many movies,” she scoffs when she pulls away. She’s smiling, though, a little. 

“I know,” Brian says. His knees hit the floor with a jarring _thunk._ Katya flinches above him, but doesn’t feel it, can’t feel anything other than his hammering heart and his throbbing dick. “I can be a real idiot.” He runs his hands all over her, all the way up her smooth thighs to grab her waist. “Can I kiss you like this?” he asks softly. “Would that be okay?” 

Katya coughs out a laugh. “It’s your hour.” Her voice is husky overhead. Brian presses his tongue against the outline of her cock through the silk, does it again when he feels her shudder. His brain is moving honey-slow, everything heavy and sweet and dense. 

“You are so beautiful,” he breathes. “You’re the most beautiful girl I think I've ever met.”

Katya strokes her thumb over his eyebrow. “I’m not a girl,” she reminds him, singsong.

Brian’s lips twitch. “But also not yet a woman. Right?”

Katya puts both hands on his shoulders and shoves him lightly away, fixing him with a serious stare. He blinks up at her. “Sorry,” she says slowly, “but...am I supposed to believe you’ve tricked a _human female_ into marrying you? Not to, y’know, break the fourth wall, I’m loving this whole thing, but…”

Brian bites hard on both lips so he won’t shriek. “We were really young,” he protests. His voice wobbles with barely-suppressed laughter, and he sobers himself by taking careful hold of her panties and easing them down just enough for her cock to spring out. It’s gorgeous and hard, precum beading at the tip. Brian’s salivating over it like a fucking animal. 

“Bet you were.” Her hand comes around to stroke the fuzz on the back of his head, behind his left ear. “You treat her good?” 

Brian kisses the underside of her cock with his mouth closed. “I really try to.” Katya sighs. He licks her slowly this time, tongues a wet line up to the head. “I make mistakes, though,” he says, then he slurps her into his mouth and starts blowing her properly, holding on tight to her hips.

Katya’s nails bite into the back of his neck. His cock stabs upward, gets nothing. “You’re only human, honey,” she purrs. “God, I want to fuck your face so bad, can I do that?” 

Brian’s eyes roll back in his skull. He nods up at her sharply, and she takes his jaw carefully in her hands and slides inside, thrusts rough and hard. He groans around her, gives her his throat, lets her use him. 

“Oh, god,” she’s panting. “Oh, you don’t suck dick like a married man, do you, Brian? You know what you’re doing with that mouth.” He makes another low sound, and she shushes him, strokes his cheekbones with her thumbs as she watches him swallow her dick over and over. “There you go,” she rasps, “take it all for me. Good boy, that’s. That’s just what you needed, isn’t it. That’s just what you like.” 

He does like this, he’s always liked it, likes it best of all with Katya, who feels everything and wants to let him know exactly how good it is. He thinks vaguely that with the tiniest bit of friction, maybe even just a brush against the skin of her calf, he could come like this, just from sucking her off and listening to her tell him how good he’s doing. 

But then she’s pulling back, slipping out of his mouth with a filthy _pop._ “Enough, enough,” she pants. He sits back on his heels and looks up at her. Her chest is heaving. Sweat glitters off her skin. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. 

“Did I do something wrong?” he asks softly, just to fuck with her. She’s never going to let him live this down, but it’s worth it for the way her knees almost give out on her at the sound of his voice. 

She reaches out a hand for him, pulls him to his feet. He’s still fully clothed, shoes and all. She’s shaking her head, looking slightly dazed. “No, honey, you’re doing swell. But if you wanna experience, you know, any of the other carnal pleasures from the Garden of Earthly Delights, we’re going to have to pump these brakes a hair.” She tugs him in for a kiss, then starts walking decisively back toward the bedroom. Brian’s on her like gravity. 

She’s got it pretty dark, a couple candles lit and her little red bedside table lamp on. The light in here is always nice. The drawing of her on the wall stares out at him like it’s issuing a challenge, permanently unimpressed. Katya nods at the bed with steel in her expression. Brian pauses, glancing between them, then starts pulling off his clothes as fast as he can. He can’t see anything but her, her clear eyes and her hard cock and her strong, lean body wrapped in fine soft fabric. She’s still got her whole ensemble on. Her cock strains forward through her lingerie, begs for him, but her expression is agonizingly neutral. 

“You’re so sexy,” he says. He sounds so far gone in his own ears. “I’d leave her for you, if you wanted me to. I’d take you out of here. You wouldn’t have to do this anymore.” 

Katya screams with laughter. “That’s what they all say,” she cackles. 

“I mean it,” he protests, even as he feels himself burning red all over. 

“Sure you do,” she says, dabbing at her eyes with the back of her thumb. “God, that was _funny._ You almost popped my lash right off. All right. Get on your hands and knees on the bed, you fuckin’ slut. That’s what you wanna hear, huh?” 

He’s down to one sock and his underwear now, but he scrambles onto the bed on all fours, flexing his ankle when she peels the sock off. He lifts his hips obediently as she sticks her fingers under the waistband of the briefs and yanks down. “I would,” he breathes. He can feel his hips pushing back. His cock is so hard, so heavy. Neither of them have touched it. He’d give anything for the pads of her fingers, the brush of her lips. “I’d marry you, if I could.” 

“I don’t want to be married,” she says. He feels her fingertip slipping down between his cheeks, so cautious. “Hey, wait, you want my mouth instead’a this?” 

“Yeah, okay, yes,” he whispers, and then she’s on him, spreading him wide. He moans sharply at the hot press of her mouth against him. “Katya, _fuck,_” he chokes. His face drops down onto the bed, and she grips him harder, lapping at him, fucking into him with her tongue. All he can think is that he must be covered in her red lipstick, and he should be revolted by this but instead the thought brings him that much closer to making a mess of her crisp dark sheets. If she looks at his cock the wrong way, it’s all over. She licks into him again and again until he’s dripping wet with her and gasping. He feels electrified, flammable, unsafe with desire. “Fuck me,” he hears himself pleading in a wrecked voice, “please, please just fuck me.” 

She doesn’t stop right away, just moans into him and tugs him back tighter against her face. She never does what she’s told. Trixie’s powerless, can’t stop the sounds he’s making, can’t do anything but take what she gives him and beg. Finally, she pulls back, slapping his ass hard for good measure. “God, you know, you should really talk to your wife,” she says, all gravel and breath. “If she’s anything like me, she’ll be totally down to fuck your ass. It is so good. It’s a work of fucking art, you _slag._” 

“She’s nothing like you.” Katya chuckles at that, guides him carefully back up onto his hands and knees. He sways on the bed as she wriggles out of her panties and reaches for the bedside table. He hears a drawer open, then the rip of a condom wrapper, the sounds of her readying herself for him. 

“You ever done this before?” Katya asks him. She’s drizzling lube over his hole, rubbing it in with two fingers right away like she already knows the answer. 

Brian thinks. “Once or twice,” he says mildly. “In college. I was always drunk.” 

“Uh-huh.” She spears him with both fingers, fucks into him slowly. “This is gonna be an adjustment, then, but trust me, it’s better this way.” She nudges at his prostate and he hisses, twisting under her. She quiets him with a firm hand on his hip, making little soothing sounds. He goes as still as he can, throat tight with effort. “You want another finger, or you’re ready for the real thing?” 

“No, I’m ready.” Behind him, above him, Katya laughs quietly.

“I was really just being polite,” she murmurs. “You’re trying to eat me alive, you’re so ready. And that third finger’s still got a nail on it, so.”

He opens his mouth to retort but then her cock nudges against him. He breathes slowly, makes himself relax, takes her into him little by little. It’s no effort, not with how ready, how needy he is for her, and once she’s inside he lets himself cry out, drop his head down onto his arms again. She’s not taking it slow, but she’s going easy on him, keeping her thrusts long and deep and steady. “Katya—that’s so, so good,” he slurs, slack-jawed.

“I know, baby, I know,” she coos. “You want a little more?” He nods weakly, and she starts fucking him harder, taking his dick loosely in her fist, just barely stroking at him. Brian jerks his hips back up, pushing into her, angling flush against her with every thrust. She laughs at him, but there’s more than a little gasp in it.

“Fuck, take it easy, honey,” she hisses, her claws dug into his hip. He arches back anyway, clenches around her cock as tight as he can until she growls low in her throat. 

“I’m sorry!” He’s trying to catch his breath but he can hardly get the words out. “It feels, you just feel so good.” 

“Yeah, and I’m trying to keep it that way for more than fifteen goddamn seconds!” she protests. He can’t stop himself, fucking back onto her again. She squeezes the base of his dick tight, thrusts into him harder still. “You are such a fucking _liar._ ‘Once or twice’—when, last week? Look at you, trying to get more. Chasing down that cock. Oh, you needed this so bad, didn’t you. That feel so good inside you?” 

Pleasure jerks through him with cattle-prod urgency. Brian’s arm flails back, grasping at Katya’s thigh. “Stop, stop, can I turn over? I want to look at you. I want to see your face.” 

Katya grunts as she forces herself to still, pulling out of him slowly. “Feeling sentimental?” She sounds tight, strained, even as she teases him. “Want me to fuck you like it’s our wedding night, baby, give it to you missionary like God intended?”

“Katya, please,” he whispers. “Treat me nice.”

He can feel that hit her, can hear the catch in her breath. “It’s your hour,” she murmurs again, much softer. “C’mon, sweetheart, on your back for me.”

She stays off him just long enough for him to tumble over and urge her forward, back inside him, legs hitched up between them. She sinks forward into him, sighing with the relief of it, and then straightens her back, eyelids fluttering under her heavy lashes. 

The way she looks—lipstick smudged, smeared off, her big eyes lidded and flashing silver as she stares down at him, it’s—her robe has fallen open to her waist, barely draped in place in the crooks of her elbows. Her bra strap slips off one narrow shoulder, blindfolding the saint on her right bicep. Beneath her, Brian feels small, plain. Katya’s haloed in the light from her candles, canonized. Brian reaches up, reverent, smooths the flat of his hand against the muscles of her belly, up to the left cup of her bra, squeezing softly. She closes her eyes like it feels like heaven. Her cock drives into him harder, a punch of pleasure up through his guts that he can feel in his eye sockets. 

“Listen,” he whispers, “I don’t want an hour. I wanna stay all night.” He reaches up higher, brushes his thumb over her plush lower lip. “I want to stay here with you, I want this all the time.” 

She’s leaning over him, her hair falling all over their faces. She pulls his thumb into her mouth and sucks, her cheeks hollowing. Brian’s lungs squeeze. She must be so close, trying to hold it off however she can. Speech is a battle now, but he stares into her face and tells her, “I love you so much. No games. You know that, right, Katya? You know how much I love you?”

Her eyes open. They’re wet. She takes a hand and drops it down on his cheek, and he turns his face into it, kisses her palm, every lovely finger. He’s so full of her it’s like nothing else exists. “I see you,” he chokes into her hand. His voice sounds deeper than usual, fucked-out. “I see exactly what you are, and it’s so beautiful. So—so beautiful, Katya.” 

“Trixie, god, please,” she sobs out, and then she melts over him, grabs him tight and mashes their bodies together, fucks him so hard all he can do is gulp in air, the bedframe wailing under them.

His thumb is slick from her mouth all the way down to his wrist, and he gets it between their bodies, smears it over the head of his cock, more of her lipstick on more of him. He manages maybe two good strokes before she kisses him hard and joins her fingers with his, makes him come all over their knuckles, their bellies, with a desperate halting sound he’s never heard from himself before. 

When she follows, a second later, burying herself deep inside him with a last brutal thrust, he feels distantly aware that he might cry. He doesn’t realize he’s actually doing it until she’s nuzzling him, kissing tears off his face, even though he can see her cheeks are wet, too.

“Oh my god.” She collapses on top of him, solid and warm. Her cock’s still in him. He clenches around her, and she hisses, overcome. “I love you. I love you so much. You’re crazy. I love you,” she repeats. Her voice hitches, and Brian feels moisture in the crook of his neck, just holds her close while she comes down.

They breathe, crading each other. Brian can feel Katya’s heart thudding against his own. He wets his lips and says, in what little voice he has left: 

“You know, if we’d met at a different time, in some other way, if I’d just seen you performing one time and known, like, I have to have her, it might’ve been like this.” Is he making sense? He’s lost all perspective on logic. He goes on anyway. “And I’d have known you right from the start, all of you, instead of having to, like, to work through all my bullshit first. And I would’ve loved you then, too, I think, exactly how I love you now.” 

Katya kisses him below his left eye, then his right. “Oh, mama,” she manages to say. Her voice is watery, shaking. She lines up their foreheads and noses. “You would’ve never…” She sniffles. “…_never_ had the balls to pay me for sex.” 

Brian shriek-laughs, surprised, and Katya does, too. “Steady now,” she says, kissing his face again. “One, two…” She slides out of him, and he gives himself exactly one second to feel bereft, needy. But he can have this again. He can have this any time he wants. He whines in his throat anyway, and she makes a face at him, rolling off to lay beside him. Her golden hair fans out around her, making a fairytale princess of her. “Did you mean what you said?” she pants, flopping her face to the side to look at him. “You wanna marry me?”

Brian’s skin goes warm again. But she doesn’t look like she’s about to roast him to death. “I don’t know,” he says honestly. “It felt right to say it, then. I know it’s not what you want, though.” 

“Oh, god, Tracy, who knows what I want,” Katya sighs. “Can you just stay here in bed with me? For now? That’s what I want.” 

The spell’s fading away. Trixie’s coming back to himself, back into who he is, and that’s all he wants, too. He wraps his arms around Katya, rubbing his face happily against her padded tits. “Mhmm.” 

Katya’s fingers trace little designs over Trixie’s back. “You know.” Trixie looks up at her, but her eyes are on the ceiling. Her makeup is completely ruined, a little stubble shadowing her jaw. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. “I’m lucky,” she says. “You know? It’s easy to ruminate on my myriad failings and the many humiliating errors I’ve made along my, my path, my _process,_ but. I’m lucky. I’m lucky I met you.”

Trixie presses a kiss to her sternum. He slots their fingers together, squeezes her hand tight. Katya takes the hand from Trixie’s back and uses her thumb and index to stroke their joined fingers. It’s disorienting. Their skin feels the same. “I don’t see you that way,” Trixie says quietly. “Your ‘failings,’ or.” Words float up from his gut, hover on the roof of his mouth, so he speaks them. “There’s a part of me that’s just… you,” he tells her. “I don’t know when it happened, but. It’s in there. So. When you’re thinking all those rotten thoughts about yourself, know there’s a piece of you that you can’t touch. I’m gonna hold onto it for you, okay?” 

It’s the least he can do. For her, for both of them. She’s got a little piece of him, too, even if she doesn’t know it, with wide brown eyes and an unsmiling mouth painted soft pink.

Katya doesn’t respond to this. But he knows she hears him.

Long moments pass. Trixie’s mind starts to get loose, spindly with dream logic. Katya suddenly speaks. 

“I still want that money.” 

He lifts his head up, looks her dead in the face. She’s not smiling, but her eyes have a twinkle to them. “You’re not serious,” he informs her.

She pushes him away, sits up straight in bed, looking scandalized. “As a heart attack, bitch!” she exclaims. Off his stunned, affronted expression, she starts ticking off her fingers. “Mama. Put on my finery for you, worked that pussy out but _good,_ gave you the whole-ass girlfriend experience? What, you thought because we’re in love I’d let you off the hook? Buh-_rian?_” 

“Jesus Christ!” He scrambles up to a sitting position. “You are such a cunt!” 

“Give me my _money,_ you trick-ass ho,” she demands, and then falls over laughing. She points to his shorts crumpled on the floor, his wallet on full display like a scarlet letter.

Trixie stares at her. “Katya!” But she doesn’t budge, just points more emphatically, waving her arm, the Transvestite Ghost of Christmas Future. He scoots bare-assed to the edge of the bed and bends for the wallet. She whistles.

He’s got a few gigs’ worth of tips in there from a couple nights back, hadn’t made it to the ATM with them yet. He gives her a pleading look. “All of it!” she wheezes, hand out.

“I need this for _food,_” he protests. 

“All of it! All! Of! It!” She pounds her fists on the bed, kicks her legs, rolls around like a woman possessed. That fucking lace front holds. She’s truly a sorceress.

Maybe this is his fault, for carrying so much cash. He brings the wad of money back to the middle of the bed, dumps it all over her while she screams in delight. She’s laughing wildly, now, and Trixie catches it like a bad cold, snorting and giggling right along with her.

“Don’t worry, baby, there’s always more money,” she says sweetly, reaching out to stroke his cheek. “I know a guy who knows a guy, actually, he might be able to help you make some dough off those dick suckin’ lips.” 

“Fuck. You,” Trixie says, trying not to smile, as she howls some more. “You ugly old bitch.” 

She just laughs and laughs, then falls on him and kisses him and kisses him, until drowsiness starts to take hold. He’s crushed under her, and he can feel her getting heavier, her big lashes rustling against his face with every breath. He still has the presence of mind, a cobweb of it, to mumble, “Don’t fall asleep like this.”

“Ugh.” She smushes her face into his neck and sucks. “Let me. I’m so fucking beat.”

“_Katya._” He puts both hands on her shoulders and shoves her off him, gently. “Don’t be stupid. You’re gonna wreck this hair, girl.”

“I’m always stupid,” she says, eyes still closed. Trixie plucks her lashes gently off her face and places them on the bedside table. Katya makes a soft sound but doesn’t react otherwise. Trixie gathers all the strength he has left and hoists himself up to a sitting position. 

“Fine, you big baby,” he murmurs. “You wait there. I got this.” 

His legs are shaky and weak, but he hobbles to her bathroom and gets the makeup wipes she keeps behind her mirror. There’s a little pot of moisturizer there, too, its contents indented with the shape of Trixie’s fingers alone, he’s pretty sure. He glances wistfully at the toothbrush he keeps here in its little red cup beside Katya’s. It can wait. Everything can. 

He settles back into bed beside her. She’s gotten her wig off and deposited it on the bedside table, but she’s nearly asleep on her back, lips slightly parted and eyes still behind her shadowed lids. Trixie presses a makeup wipe between his palms to try and warm it as best he can, like that’ll make a difference. “This is gonna be cold,” he tells her anyway, and swipes it carefully over her right brow. 

“_Oh!_ Mothefucker!” she gasps. “Son of a bitch!” Trixie laughs at her as he works. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. 

“Relax,” he says. “You’ll thank me later, when you’re not molting like a fucking snake.”

Katya’s eyes open slowly and fix on him. “You don’t have to do all this for me,” she mumbles. Trixie strokes the wet cloth over her brows to loosen the glue, watching her skin appear pink and clean underneath. “I can do it myself.” 

“You want me to stop?” Trixie asks. Katya seems to really consider this, and then she shakes her head. “Okay, then. Shut your eyes and let me get all this pretty shadow off.” 

Katya does. Trixie goes through a small handful of wipes getting her face clean. Tomorrow morning, when the air no longer shimmers with magic, he might not be able to say everything he wants. Tonight, nothing’s stopping him. “I like this,” he tells her. “You letting me take care of you a little, like you do for me. You look so beautiful. You always look so beautiful.” 

Katya practically purrs at this, squirming. “Hang on, girl, stay still,” he admonishes softly, and she does. As he’s taking his final pass under her eyes, they flutter open. They’re shining again, full. Trixie leans down and presses a kiss between them.

“Don’t,” he whispers. “It’s okay.” 

She doesn’t respond, doesn’t have to. He gets it. He sits back up and unscrews the lid from the moisturizer. “Last thing,” he promises, showing her. He dips his fingers and massages it into Katya’s skin, taking his time, working carefully over her face. “There,” he says. “Now you can sleep.”

She’s moving slow now, coming unwound. “C’mere, Tracy,” she breathes. She gets herself under the covers and holds up one corner for Trixie to join her. He does, wrapping her up in his arms. He feels strummed, resonant with feeling. Katya’s nearly asleep already. Her face is completely relaxed, her head back and lips tilted up in half a smile, as if she’s hearing some beautiful song being played very quietly, just for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all your thoughts and feelings are precious to me. thank you so much for reading!


	6. how i like 'em

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you haven't given it a listen yet, i highly recommend checking out the [playlist](https://www.tinyurl.com/stutterwott) for this fic, especially now that we're at the end. oh my god, we're at the end!
> 
> [joanneelizabeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/joanneelizabeth/pseuds/joanneelizabeth), [mattepinkallshades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattepinkallshades/pseuds/mattepinkallshades), and [connyhascontrol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/connyhascontrol/pseuds/connyhascontrol) are beacons of light, positivity, and generosity. thank you for letting me scream in your faces about this, and thank you for screaming in mine in return. it is a loud, wonderful friendship, and i'm very very grateful for it.
> 
> i wrote "burn all your civilian clothes" in total isolation, and i knew i wanted to write this sequel but i had no idea how to get from the first scene to the last. [beanierose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanierose/pseuds/beanierose) generously offered to look it over for me. she took the extremely rough outline i had into her little hands and kept it warm while i figured out what it was supposed to be. then, once i figured out how to get where i was going, she stayed right there, providing endless pep talks and moral support and much-needed beta work. this story essentially gave me a new best friend. i love her a lot and i think you should, too. 
> 
> and thank YOU so, so much for reading. i'm always down to take requests in-verse; i don't work fast but i do work! mostly i'm just very grateful to you for sticking around. <3

“Okay, but consider this. You scrap all of it, we put you in a sumo suit and cover you in fake blood, and then, when the camera comes on, you’re just… ” Katya swipes a hand in front of his face and adopts a neutral, lifeless expression. “No wig, no paint. Straight down the barrel. Right?”

Trixie glares at him dead-eyed. “Exactly like that! And then… you wait, you wait, and you just start _screaming!_” Katya exclaims, then falls back wheezing into his chair. 

“Don’t give her any ideas,” Kim says over Katya’s convulsive laughter. “She’ll listen to you, and we’ll have to start all over again.” 

“I never listen to her!” Trixie insists. “She’s senile!” 

Bob snorts. “This is called _enabling._ Shouldn’t you know all about that, Katya, you addled bitch?”

“That’s so _insensitive,_ Robert,” Katya whimpers, working up a good fake cry. “I hope you fall off that thing and die so I can stop living my life in fear of your constant attacks.”

Bob’s up on a chair, fussing with the corner of the sheet they’ve hung on the wall to create a smooth backdrop for Trixie’s janky little interview segments. The whole drag room has been reorganized, the vanities shoved into a corner and their rolling clothes racks relocated to the hallway. Feng shui, but whatever the opposite of that is. 

If Ru-fucking-Paul is going to see this, Trixie wants it to be perfect.

“But like, that would actually be an improvement over this look,” Trixie mutters, smoothing her skirt down. The fringe on her sleeves is in terrible shape. She can feel a wave of panic behind a door in her mind, and she’s putting her whole back into holding it closed. “I look like Dolly Parton’s cousin that they hide in the attic when company comes over.”

“It’s not that bad,” Kim argues. “It’s a good option.” 

“She’s lying to you,” Katya stage-whispers. “That thing’s gotta go. Just give me another five minutes with this, it’ll be there.” He bows his head over the sewing machine where he’s putting the finishing touches on an updated version of the garment, magenta and gold, a real Nashville Barbie moment. The Kenmore hums to life, and Katya works cheerfully, his lips thin with focus. 

She hardly knows what to do with all this attention. It’s hard to feel anything at all beyond nerves and a rising sense of frustration at her own human limitations. Her three favorite people are gathered here for her, trying to help her; the least she can do is not fuck this up. She goes to the mirror and stares at herself. She doesn’t look as nervous as she feels. If her reflection thinks she’s okay, maybe she’s doing all right.

She takes a deep breath and turns to Bob and Kim. “Tell me again what I need,” she says.

Bob secures the edge of the sheet at last and carefully dismounts the chair. “Girl, I’m telling you, most of it you’ve got in the bag.” He counts up the bullet points on a few fingers. “A bunch of different looks. You have those. They just want to see what’s in your closet so they know you won’t be scrambling when you get there. And they wanna see you can talk into a camera without having a fucking meltdown. You can do that.”

“Tell them about how you’ve got a young female wife,” Katya suggests blithely. “Very unique and exciting backstory! They’ll love that.” 

Trixie goes hot all along her spine. Katya smiles sweetly at her. Bob and Kim are oblivious, of course, but it’s only been a couple of weeks since that night and she still goes up in flames every time she thinks of it.

“Sure, that. Just show them that you can be versatile,” Kim says. Katya snorts. 

“Don’t!” Bob yells at him, lips twitching. Katya gives him a huge, shiny grin and says nothing. 

Kim goes on, “We’ll get a little tap dancing on camera, and hopefully nobody who watches this will die in seven days.” 

“It’s really just, you need —” Bob gestures at Kim for confirmation. “At least, our season, they did a game where you need a celebrity impersonation.” 

“But I don’t do impersonations,” Trixie worries. “I don’t have any of those. _Fuck._” Her mind spins. “Do you think I could just do her?” she asks slowly. “Do RuPaul?”

“NO!” they all bellow at the same time. 

“Jesus Christ, Trixie,” Bob says, as Katya looks up from his sewing machine to spit, “That’s _stupid!_”

“You’re overthinking this,” Kim says. “It’s making you dumber. And no more Red Bull. Okay?”

Trixie’s hands come up to rub her temples but she stops herself at the last minute, remembering her beat. “I literally don’t know how you did this without having a total mental breakdown,” she says.

“You helped, remember?” Kim says. She did, of course she remembers, standing by Kim with her arms out as she changed into one look after another, whirling garments away and bringing more. The thing a drag queen needs most of all, most of the time, is an extra pair of strong, steady hands. Trixie’s got three. Her heart swells. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“Ignorance is also bliss, though,” Bob points out. “Now you know exactly how they’re gonna break your ass down when you get there, and you’re trying to prepare for that on top of making a cute video.”

“_If_ I get there,” Trixie says. Bob and Kim fix her with matching unimpressed looks. Trixie could hear their collective _sure, Jan_ from space.

She goes to Katya, who’s still hunched over the sewing machine. “Just another minute, Mary,” he tells her when her shadow falls across his work. He looks up at her with a soft smile, then hits the pedal again, running the left sleeve under the needle.

“It’s not too late, you know,” Trixie says in a low, urgent voice. “All your stuff’s here. We can do you, next.”

Katya furrows his brow, glancing up again. “What are you talking about?” he asks. “The pressure’s getting to you, Tracy, you gotta relax.” His eyes light up; he gets out of his chair and steps in close to her, slipping his hands down over her padded hips. “I know what’ll help. Let’s tell them you’ve got an eyelash in your eye and I’ll jerk you off in the bathroom real quick, clear your head right up.” 

“Katya, no, shut up,” Trixie insists, ignoring the way her stomach twists hungrily at the thought. She takes his hands from her hips and squeezes them in her own.

“Fine, fine, a blowjob. You’re so spoiled,” he chides, rolling his eyes. When Trixie only shakes her head, Katya’s smile fades. “No?” He cranes his face up toward hers, trying to touch the tips of their noses. “What’s wrong, honey?” 

“Nobody’s gonna want to see me without you,” she blurts. It comes out low and defeated, against her will. There’s a fist suddenly forming at the base of her throat. There’s a rising sense of shame, a ruined birthday party feeling, too many eyes on her and a tantrum boiling in her ears. The frilly dress isn’t exactly helping. 

Katya’s brow furrows, confusion and disbelief. He double-squeezes her fingers back, _honk honk,_ hard enough to crack both their knuckles with a sound like a snare roll. Trixie snaps back into her body at the noise, the sensation. “Mama, that’s bullshit and you know it,” Katya whispers back fiercely. “You _know _that’s not true.”

“But you could come with me,” she murmurs. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Katya blinks. He opens his mouth, then closes it again. “You—no,” he says, after a moment. “You mean, like, would I also audition?”

He looks so genuinely confused that Trixie can’t help laughing. “Well, like, I don’t think they’ll buy you as my support animal, you fucking dog,” she says. Katya wails. Bob and Kim look over at them both, but Trixie ignores them, saying quietly, “Yes. Would you also audition. Do you want to try to go. Because I bet you’d get on.” Katya stops laughing. Trixie nods into his bemused face, like that’ll make him agree. “I bet you would. You’re way more famous than me, and you’re hilarious, and—”

“No,” Katya says immediately. He raises Trixie’s hands to his mouth, kisses her knuckles one after the other, and then drops them. “No, that’d be bad for me, honey. I’m not gonna do that.” 

“We’d be together,” Trixie says. “Think about it.”

“I’ve thought about it.” Katya is smiling like he sometimes does, pale and thin and without using his eyes. “I can’t, Trixie. Not even with you. I can’t.”

He doesn’t elaborate. Trixie doesn’t ask him to; she can fill in the blanks herself, paint the whole sordid scene by numbers. She knows that she can’t even imagine the kind of restraint Katya fights for on a daily basis, can’t conceptualize wanting something and knowing she can’t have it. Or knowing that she _could_ have it, but that it would also destroy her. She can’t relate. She’s had it too hard, never had it hard like that. 

They’re different. It’s okay.

Katya’s jamming one thumbnail under the other, jaw set, eyes downcast. Trixie searches her mind for something shiny to dangle. 

“I just keep thinking how bad it’ll be for my ego,” she says. She makes herself roll her eyes. “Who’s gonna laugh at my jokes?”

“Oh, literally no one—_don’thitmeDON’T!_” Katya squeals, dancing away from Trixie’s indignant smacks. He catches her around the waist again when she gives up, guffawing. “You’re _so_ funny,” he tells her, planting a kiss on her neck while she squirms. “You need to hear that? I’ll tell you all day. You’re so pretty, you’re so smart. And you’re so _sexy,_ I want to hike up this ugly fucking skirt and rail the stage fright right out of you in front of God and everybody.” 

“You gotta _stop,_” Trixie hisses, pulling away before Katya can clock the flush that’s drifting up her throat. Katya explodes into a gleeful wheeze, and it might hurt Trixie’s feelings if she didn’t know he meant every word of it.

“Down Dog!” Bob calls, snapping his fingers in Katya’s direction. He disentangles himself from Trixie at once and leaps to attention. “Put your goddamn dick away and finish that piece, okay? We’re literally losing light.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, you’re right,” Katya concedes, hands up. He’s obsessed with Bob these days; Trixie can hardly blame him. “America’s Next Gay-Ass Drag Phenom says we’re losing light, we’re losing light.” 

“I didn’t win,” Bob protests. He’s grinning. “Kim won.”

“I didn’t win, that whore Naomi won,” Kim says distantly. He’s on his phone, only half-paying attention, but his eyes flick up to Bob’s for a second and he sticks the tip of his tongue out at him.

“No, actually, didn’t Acid win?” Bob says, smacking Kim’s arm. 

“Oh, yeah, she kicked our asses,” Kim agrees. Then they both crack up. 

Trixie’s heart is in her mouth, in her shoes, in the tips of her fingers and flooding around her spine. Katya gives her hand one final squeeze and then retreats to the sewing machine. Kim puts his phone down and starts toward the hallway. “Trixie, where’s your guitar?” he asks over his shoulder. “We can do some music first, maybe.”

“In the corner, by the bed, in the pink case,” Trixie says. 

“Okay, I know what a guitar case looks like, _God!_” Kim calls back after him. “I’m Asian, not stupid.”

“Can’t you be both?” Bob and Trixie yell at the same time.

“Okay, okay!” Katya interrupts, as they scream with laughter. “Here, here, shut up, it’s ready, try it on.” He eases the dress out from under the needle and shakes it out straight. Trixie coos, coming closer. 

“That looks gorgeous,” Bob tells him. “Damn, Katya, who knew you had any talent?” 

Trixie takes the dress gently into her hands, like it might dissolve if she’s not careful. “_Brian,_” she murmurs, unthinking.

Katya scrunches his face up at her. “_Brian,_” he echoes back. “Put it on, you fucking homo.” 

Trixie stares at him for a long minute. His blue eyes are soft on hers, luminous with pride. “Help me?” She turns her back on him. He laughs on the nape of her neck and zips her out of her dress. She stands before the two of them in just her underwear and pads, half-assembled: a dress form, a crash test dummy. If that ain’t the truth. “Thank you,” she whispers.

“You two need to seriously get a fucking room,” Bob says, rolling his eyes. “Get a whole house of them.”

“C’mon, Robert, you know you love to watch,” Katya says, moaning for emphasis and gyrating his skinny torso in a lazy wave. Trixie bites the inside of her cheek. 

They’ve talked about it a little, moving in together, in vague and hypothetical terms. But Katya needs space, and Trixie needs order. Until they can afford someplace with enough square footage for both, it’s a non-starter. 

They’re different, and it’s okay.

Trixie slips into the new dress Katya’s made for her and takes a deep breath, holds it. “A little more, a little more,” Katya urges, pulling the zip tighter in his fingers. “That fat fucking ass is going to be the death of me, you sexy dumb bitch.”

The zipper closes around the swell of her hips and shoots up the rest of the way easily. Trixie exhales. It’s satisfyingly tight, like clean skin or keeping a fast tempo. She turns to show them. The fringe shimmers around her as she moves. “What do you think?” she asks. 

Katya crosses his arms over his chest, considering his handiwork with a measured smile. Bob lets out a low whistle. “I love it,” Trixie tells Katya. “Oh, my god, it’s so fierce. It’s my new favorite dress.” 

Trixie has the benefit of makeup, like a pound and a half of it, to do the work of hiding her emotions for her. Katya, full boy and in broad daylight, does not. Not that he’s trying. His mouth splits into a wide grin, whiter even than usual against the happy pink of his cheeks. 

Kim maneuvers Trixie’s guitar case through the narrow doorframe. “Is this it?” he deadpans. 

“Thank you, Kimberly.” Trixie takes it from him and brings it to the vanity, setting it down carefully on her stool. She snaps open the clasps and pulls the guitar out, maneuvering the strap around her wig as carefully as she can. Katya rushes forward to assist her, popping up on his toes to protect her hair with his hands. She digs into the case’s interior pocket for her capo, but as she fumbles for it, her knuckles brush something else. She closes her fist around the object, frowning, and pulls it out. “The fuck?”

She uncurls her fingers and starts hard. “Oh my _god,_” she breathes.

Resting in her palm, linked neatly together, is a pair of earrings she’s never seen before. Vintage, real vintage, if the screw-on clasps are anything to go by, two golden branches laden with clusters of brilliant pink and white gems. It looks like the fruit of some magic, wish-granting tree. Trixie whirls on Katya with her mouth hanging open. “What are these?” she demands. 

“Well gosh, honey, earrings, it looks like,” Katya says, eyes wide, “but I’m not a scientist.” 

Trixie knows all of Katya’s haunts. She knows where he would’ve found these, and she knows from their weight in her hand that they’re legit. “Katya, why?” she asks. “These must’ve cost a fortune.” Her eyes narrow to slits. Katya almost disappears into the forest of Trixie’s lashes. “Did you mop these?”

Katya laughs with his head back. “No I did not, fuck you very much,” he says. “They weren’t that expensive. Here, get down, I’ll put ‘em on you.”

Trixie stares at him. He just smiles placidly at her, waiting. After a moment, she scoops her hair out of the way and turns her back, bending at the knee for him. 

She can feel his eyes on her, soft evaluation, patient. “Your Utkatasana still needs work,” he says in her ear. “Could never teach you anything. Hang on, stay still. These old-school clasps are such a fucking pain.”

It wasn’t that long ago he was just Brian to her. Brian, the hot, weird yoga instructor she’d wake up at almost any hour to see, no matter how rough the crowd the night before, no matter how badly she’d slept. She had no idea. I contain multitudes, he’d told her. She weaves her fingers together so she won’t reach for him and clutch his hand in hers.

“Pull yourself together, mama,” he whispers in her ear as he tightens the screw on the second earring. 

She laughs away the tightness behind her eyes. “Excuse me, isn’t that my line? You quivering idiot?” she shoots back. He snaps his teeth beside the shell of her ear, and she shrieks, wriggling back against him.

“Here, Tracy, look,” he says lowly. “Tell me if you like them.”

Of course she likes them. They’re perfect, just the right size, complementing her hair and makeup like they were made for this look. They’re showy and bright and fun but still serious, elegant, beautiful. “Katya,” she breathes again. “_Why._” 

Katya reaches around to brush a thumb against them. She’s still in a hover with bent knees, letting him be tall. “Look how much you love them,” he says. “That’s why.”

“You spent too much.” Every time she moves, they whisper in the light like a Greek chorus. She looks at him in the mirror, and his reflection flickers. She blinks again, and there she is, Katya, the woman that lives inside her, the woman she loves.

“Wasn’t my money,” she says. “Don’t get mad, okay, but I took it off a trick.” Trixie purses her lips so she won’t grin. Katya goes on, “He was so gullible. Sweet, though. Real cute. Said he wanted to marry me, can you believe that?”

Trixie fusses with her guitar strap, adjusts her tuning pegs, but her eyes keep going back to Katya’s. “He sounds stupid,” she finally deadpans, and Katya scrunches her nose up, hissing with laughter.

“That’s how I like ‘em,” she tells her. Trixie looks at her in the mirror, just looks and looks and sees her, sees her looking back. 

“Trixie,” Bob says flatly, after a moment of this. “Bitch, we don’t got all day.” 

The woman retreats with a secret smile. Katya smacks a kiss on Trixie’s shoulder. “She’s right,” he tells her. “Don’t be scared. Show ‘em what you can do. Show ‘em what we already know.” And then he’s sailing across the room to peer into Bob’s camera, flitting from place to place like a hummingbird, lighting up everything he touches. 

There’s a part of her that still worries nobody wants to hear her music, a part of her that thinks she’s no good, a part of her that measures her worth in thrown drinks and turned backs and cold rooms. But she knows that part lives somewhere safe and quiet, now, inside someone else’s chest, inside someone who loves her. 

She strums, twists a couple pegs, strums again. A bright, clean major chord fills the space like water splashing into a bowl, becoming it. They’re all turning now to look at her, and she can feel herself grinning wide and doesn’t try to stop herself. Katya smiles back at her, fluorescent. She finds her mark. The camera watches her, red and constant.

“Hi! I’m Trixie Mattel,” she tells it, and she starts to play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [this is me receiving your feedback.](https://twitter.com/vampireb4by/status/1199841599494201344?s=21)
> 
> if you're one of the people who's subscribed to this story, or bookmarked it, or just like - followed it in your own private way with just your eyeballs, i appreciate you so, so much. thank you for reading.


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